Home Assistant Sleep Focus Workflow

After a lot of work, I found a solution to the problem that addresses all of my use cases: 

• Configure a boolean helper in Home Assistant that will act as a state switch for automations to track if Sleep focus mode is on or off. 
• In Apple Shortcuts setup a single shortcut that will toggle the state of the HA boolean switch using the Home Assistant “Call Service”, depending on what Focus mode (if any) is active.  
• In Shortery setup two triggers:
  • Called when a specific focus mode is active, which triggers the above Shortcut
  • Called when any Focus mode is inactive, which triggers the above Shortcut
• In System Settings Focus modes, configure all Focus modes to call the first Shortery trigger, which runs our shortcut to turn on or off the boolean switch depending on which Focus mode is active.

Home Assistant Configuration

1. In Home Assistant go to Settings -> Devices & Services -> Helpers. Select CREATE HELPER.
2. Click Toggle. Give the Toggle a name (e.g. Sleep Focus Mode). Pick an icon. Click CREATE.

Mac Shortcut Configuration

1. Open the Shortcuts app on your Mac. Create a new Shortcut and replicate the shortcut below. Or you can download it from here. Make sure the Home Assistant Companion app is installed on your Mac. 

Tips for manually creating the shortcut:

• In the “If” statement click on “Current Focus” and in the next window select Name. 
• In the Shortcut search box enter call and then select the Call Service option for Home Assistant. Make sure you select your HA server name (mine is called Home).
• Use the code block below and change the entity ID as needed.
• Call the Shortcut HA Sleep Focus Toggle.

				
					{
  "entity_id": "input_boolean.sleep_focus_mode"
}

				
			

Shortery Configuration

1. Download Shortery app. I paid the one time $8.99 USD purchase for the Pro version. I’m not sure if the free version will let you do a focus mode trigger, but you can try. If not, get Pro.  
2. Launch Shorterly and Add a Shortcut Trigger. Select Focus Mode and copy the settings below.

3. Create another Shortery trigger, copying the settings below. Make sure you select Any Focus and Inactive.

Focus Mode Configuration

1. Launch System Settings on your Mac and click on Focus.
2. Click on each Focus mode (except Driving) add a Focus Filter using Shortery and pick your HA toggle. 

Testing Sleep Focus Mode

1. In Home Assistant create an Entities card and select your Sleep focus entity.

2. On your iPhone or Mac turn on Sleep focus mode. Almost instantly the entity card should show Sleep Focus mode is on. Turn Sleep focus off (don’t select another Focus mode, just turn off sleep), and verify the entity card shows Sleep Focus mode off. 
3. On on your iPhone or Mac turn on Sleep focus mode. Almost instantly the entity card should show Sleep Focus mode is on. With Sleep focus still active, select another Focus mode (except Driving) and observe the Sleep focus entity turn off. 

Summary

Setting up Home Assistant to know if the Apple Sleep focus mode is on or not is a bit of pain. Due to Apple API restrictions and iOS Personal Shortcut design decisions, triggering when Sleep focus mode is active or inactive is difficult. All other Focus modes can easily trigger on/off status on iOS using Personal shortcuts. So for Sleep mode I’ve leveraged my Mac and the Shortery app. The solution works well, but I hope in the future Apple provides a better solution.