Tips and best practices for optimizing your smart home

You've figured out the basics of setting up your smart home, now it's time to raise your game. I've spent years installing, configuring, and tweaking dozens of smart home products in virtually every product category. Along the way I've figured out a lot of the secrets they don't tell you in the manual or the FAQs, ranging from modest suggestions that can make your smart home configuration less complex, to essential decisions that can save you from having to start over from scratch a few years later. Here's my best advice on how to optimize your smart home, digested into a dozen top tips and best practices. These days, an Amazon or Google/Nest smart speaker or smart display can fill the role of a smart home hub (and some Amazon Echo devices are equipped with Zigbee radios).. There are three major smart home platforms on the market, and your smart home will probably have at least one of them installed: Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, or Apple HomeKit.