Apple's New Smart Lock Isn't Coming to the EU or UK — Here's What That Means for Your Keys
On October 13, Apple finally confirmed what had been rumored for weeks: it is getting into the smart lock business, in partnership with LG. The new Apple Home Collection — a wired video doorbell, a thermostat, several cameras, and a UWB-enabled smart deadbolt lock — is real, priced, and dated. But the detail that most of the first-day coverage buried below the fold is the one that actually matters if you live in Europe or the UK: as of launch, the smart lock isn't coming here. Not this year, and no date has been given for when, or whether, that changes. Here's exactly what Apple announced, what's confirmed versus still unclear, why that geographic gap probably exists, and what already works today in the EU and UK if you want the convenience Apple just demonstrated without the wait.
Quick answer
- Apple's Home Collection is official. Announced October 13, 2026, it includes a video doorbell, indoor/outdoor/floodlight cameras, two thermostats, a temperature sensor, and a smart deadbolt lock — built with LG Electronics and Schneider Electric, badged with their names rather than Apple's.
- The smart lock costs $349.95 and uses ultra-wideband (UWB) radio — the same radio category behind AirTag's Precision Finding — to sense an approaching iPhone or Apple Watch and unlock automatically, with no tap, passcode, or key needed in normal use.
- It is not coming to the EU or UK at launch. Early coverage from Tom's Guide describes the lock as limited to the US and Canada, and Apple's own HomeView smart home hub — the central display the rest of the collection connects through — has been explicitly confirmed as unavailable in the European Union. No launch date for either has been given for Europe or the UK.
- It still needs a physical backup. The lock keeps a concealed physical keyhole and a PIN keypad, and nothing in the announcement mentions Find My support — this is a proximity-unlock feature for one door, not a tracker.
- Shipping starts in December 2026 for most of the collection, with Apple itself cautioning that some accessories won't arrive until early 2027 — so even US and Canadian buyers are looking at a wait, before EU and UK availability is even on the table.
- Separately, the same event confirmed Find My is spreading further into Apple's own lineup: the new $59 Siri Remote for the refreshed Apple TV 4K ships with Find My support and Precision Finding — a reminder that the underlying technology is only getting more common, even while this particular lock stays out of reach here for now.
- What already works today in the EU and UK: the Seekerity Smart Lock (a TSA-approved travel lock with Find My built in) and the Trackable Key Organizer (for the physical keys a front-door lock never touches) are shipping now, no December wait and no regional exclusion.
Jump to: what Apple announced · the smart lock, explained · why it's not in the EU or UK · why smart locks launch US-first · the Siri Remote's Find My upgrade · what a front door lock solves — and doesn't · what's already available in the EU/UK · lock vs. lock, compared honestly · a decision framework · setting up Find My for your keys · common mistakes · FAQ
What Apple actually announced on October 13
Apple didn't hold a traditional keynote for this one — no livestreamed event, no Tim Cook walkthrough. Instead, October 13 brought a product-page rollout: a refreshed HomePod mini, a new Apple TV 4K, a new smart home display called HomeView, and — the piece that had been the subject of weeks of reporting from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman before it was official — the Apple Home Collection, a line of security and climate hardware built in partnership with LG Electronics and Schneider Electric.
| Product | Price | Release | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Smart Deadbolt Lock (LG) | $349.95 | December 2026 | UWB walk-up unlock, physical keyhole, PIN keypad |
| Video Doorbell (LG) | $249.95 | December 2026 | Dual cameras, built-in spotlight |
| Outdoor Camera (LG) | $299.95 | December 2026 | Low-light color night vision |
| Indoor Camera (LG) | $199.95 | December 2026 | Geofenced privacy tilt when someone's home |
| Floodlight Camera (LG) | $399.95 | December 2026 | Dual floodlights, motion-triggered |
| Thermostat (LG or Schneider Electric) | $199.95 | December 2026 | Adaptive Temperature; $39.95 add-on room sensors |
| HomeView smart home hub | $299 | November 13, 2026 | 7-inch display, Siri AI, confirmed unavailable in the EU |
| Apple TV 4K (4th gen) | $299 | November 13, 2026 | A19 chip, Wi-Fi 7, new $59 Siri Remote with Find My |
| HomePod mini (2nd gen) | $149 | October 30, 2026 | Faster chip, four-speaker surround, new colors |
A few things are worth separating cleanly here, because the first wave of coverage blurred them. The Home Collection products carry LG's and Schneider Electric's branding, not Apple's — this is the same playbook Apple has used with HomeKit since 2014, where third parties build and support the hardware while Apple reportedly helps shape the engineering and design, and the products talk to Apple's own software. That matters for expectations: a problem with the lock's mechanism is LG's warranty to honor, not Apple's. What is new, compared to the years of HomeKit-certified locks already on the market from August, Schlage, Yale, and Level, is the depth of Apple's reported involvement in shaping this specific line — and the fact that it leans on UWB in a way none of those existing locks have.
Pricing for the lock itself needs one honest caveat. Tom's Guide's coverage lists the lock at $349.95 in its specs table but mentions $439 elsewhere in the same piece without explaining the gap; TechCrunch's reporting lists only $349.95, with no second figure. The $349.95 number is the one that shows up consistently across outlets, so treat it as the reliable figure, with the possibility that $439 reflects a bundled configuration — a keypad add-on, for instance, the way competing locks like Level's have historically priced a base model separately from a keypad bundle — rather than a reporting error. Neither Apple nor LG has published an official price list as of this writing, so a small gap between early coverage is not unusual this close to an announcement.
The smart lock itself: how UWB walk-up unlock actually works
The headline feature is proximity unlock: walk up to your front door with a compatible iPhone or Apple Watch in your pocket, and the lock senses you and opens automatically, with no tap, no passcode entry, and no key. The sensing is handled by ultra-wideband radio — a short-range technology that measures distance and direction between two devices far more precisely than standard Bluetooth. It's the same underlying radio category that gives AirTag's Precision Finding its on-screen arrow and distance readout, repurposed here to answer a related but different question: not "where exactly is this lost item," but "is this specific, trusted device close enough to this door, right now, to open it."
That's a meaningful technical upgrade over how most existing smart locks handle proximity. Bluetooth-only locks have long offered an "auto-unlock" feature, but Bluetooth's weaker distance precision means those locks often struggle to tell the difference between a phone on the porch and one still on the sidewalk, leading to either unlocking too early or needing you to walk right up and wait. UWB's precision is what makes a genuinely reliable walk-up experience plausible rather than a gimmick that unlocks the door while you're still at the end of the driveway.
Two backups are confirmed, and worth knowing about before assuming this is a phone-dependent lock with no fallback. There's a PIN keypad for entering a numeric code, and a physical keyhole concealed behind a sliding cover for an old-fashioned metal key — exactly the kind of redundancy you'd want on hardware that controls your actual front door. If your phone's battery dies, or you hand a key to a dog walker who doesn't have your Apple ID, the lock doesn't strand you.
What's conspicuously absent from every piece of coverage so far is any mention of Find My. That's worth being precise about, because it's an easy detail to assume by association: this is UWB hardware, from the company that invented Precision Finding, and it would be natural to assume the lock shows up as a trackable item in the Find My app the way an AirTag does. Nothing in the announcement or in reporting from Tom's Guide, TechCrunch, MacRumors, or Gizmochina describes Find My integration for the lock. It's UWB used for one specific sensing job — proximity to a door — not a Find My accessory you could locate if it somehow went missing (which, being bolted to a door, it generally wouldn't).
The detail most headlines missed: it isn't coming to the EU or UK
This is the part of the announcement that matters most if you're reading this from Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris, or London rather than Austin or Toronto. Two separate, specific availability statements have surfaced in the first wave of coverage, and they don't fully agree with each other on scope, which is itself worth laying out plainly rather than smoothing over:
| Product | Confirmed availability | EU/UK status | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| HomeView smart home hub | US (at minimum) | Explicitly confirmed unavailable in the European Union | MacRumors |
| Smart Deadbolt Lock | US and Canada | Described as limited to the US and Canada; EU not mentioned, UK listed only for the separate security cameras, not the lock | Tom's Guide |
| Video doorbell & cameras | US and Canada (confirmed); UK referenced for cameras specifically | Unclear for EU; UK appears more likely than for the lock or hub | Tom's Guide |
| Apple TV 4K / HomePod mini | Apple's standard global lineup | No regional restriction reported — these are normal worldwide Apple hardware launches | MacRumors |
Put plainly: the two products that would actually change how you get into your own home — the hub and the lock — are the ones with the clearest, most specific regional restriction, while the rest of the collection (and Apple's other October hardware, the TV box and the speaker) ships on Apple's normal global schedule. Neither Apple nor LG has given a reason for the gap, and no outlet we found has reported a European or UK launch window, even a vague one. "Not yet announced" and "not coming" aren't the same claim, and we're not asserting the latter — but there's currently no public timeline for either the hub or the lock reaching European or UK shelves, which for practical purposes means the same thing if you're deciding what to do this winter.
Why smart locks tend to launch US-first — an informed guess, not a confirmed reason
Apple hasn't explained the gap, so anything here is reasoned speculation rather than reported fact, and should be read that way. But it lines up with a pattern that's visible across the smart lock category generally, well beyond this one product. Electronic door locks are regulated very differently depending on where you are. In the US, a lock mainly needs to satisfy ANSI/BHMA grading and UL certification, and most American front doors use a fairly standardized deadbolt cylinder that third-party smart locks are designed to retrofit onto. European and UK doors are far less standardized — door thickness, lock case sizes, and multi-point locking mechanisms vary significantly by country, and in several EU markets, home insurance policies specify minimum lock certifications (for instance, certain European insurers require locks meeting specific EN 12209 or national equivalents) that a US-designed retrofit lock may simply not have been built or certified against yet. Radio certification is a second, separate hurdle: a UWB-equipped lock sold in the EU needs CE marking and compliance with the EU's radio equipment rules, which is a genuinely different (if related) process from US FCC certification, and one that typically takes additional months per market rather than happening automatically alongside a US launch.
None of that is a confirmed explanation for Apple and LG's specific decision — it's simply the kind of friction that has historically made US-first smart lock launches common, including for companies with far more EU retail experience than LG has in this specific hardware category. If you're hoping for a European release, the realistic framing is "possible, eventually, with no announced date," not "ruled out."
Meanwhile: Find My keeps spreading, just not through this lock
It would be easy to read the above and conclude Apple is pulling back on UWB and Find My for European and UK customers generally. The same announcement says the opposite. The redesigned Apple TV 4K, launching globally on November 13 at $299, ships with a new Siri Remote — priced separately at $59 — that includes Find My support with Precision Finding, alongside built-in far-field microphones for hands-free Siri. That's the same underlying technology this entire article has been discussing in the context of a US-only front door lock, shipping instead in a universally available $59 accessory for a TV box, no region restriction mentioned anywhere in the coverage.
It's a useful reminder of the actual shape of what's happening here. Apple isn't holding UWB or Find My back from Europe and the UK as a policy — AirTag, Precision Finding on recent iPhones, and now a Find My–enabled remote all ship here on the same schedule as everywhere else. What's specifically delayed, for reasons that look regulatory rather than strategic, is one particular category — electronic door hardware — where the certification bar is simply higher and slower outside the US. If you've been reading Apple's UWB rollout as "coming to Europe eventually, on Apple's usual global timeline," the remote is the data point that supports that read; the lock is the one exception so far, and a narrow one.
What a front-door smart lock solves — and what it still doesn't
Even setting the regional question aside entirely, it's worth being precise about the actual size of the problem this lock solves, because "Apple is entering smart locks" can read as a bigger shift than the product itself is. A front-door deadbolt, however well executed, secures one door, in one home. We went through this in detail when the lock was still rumor rather than confirmed product — our deep dive on what a UWB smart lock means (and doesn't mean) for your keys walks through a full day with one installed, and the keys that stay physical regardless: a car key or fob, an office badge or locker key, a parent's or friend's spare, a storage unit or shed key, a bike lock, a mailbox key. None of that changed when the product went from rumored to announced, and none of it changes based on which country the lock ships to first.
What has changed since that piece published is that several details are now confirmed rather than reported: the price ($349.95), the release window (December 2026), the backup methods (PIN keypad and a concealed physical key), and — the genuinely new piece of information — that it's not reaching European or UK doors at launch at all. If the earlier guide's thesis was "even people who get this lock still carry a full ring of other keys," the update to that thesis is simpler: if you're in the EU or UK, you're not getting this particular lock in the foreseeable future either way, so the keys you carry today are the keys you'll be carrying for a while yet, full stop — not just the ones outside the one door it could have replaced.
What's already available today in the EU and UK
This is the part worth being careful and honest about, because the comparison that follows isn't apples-to-apples in the way a casual reader might assume, and overstating it would be exactly the kind of inflated claim this guide is trying to avoid. The Seekerity Smart Lock is a TSA-approved travel padlock with Apple Find My tracking built into the lock body — designed for a suitcase zipper, a duffel, or a backpack, not a front door. It doesn't compete with Apple and LG's deadbolt on the job the deadbolt actually does. What it does do, today, with no regional restriction and no December wait, is put Find My tracking directly into a lock you were already going to use on a bag — so the moment you secure your suitcase zipper the way you always have, the tracking is already there, no separate AirTag to remember or clip on.
The more directly relevant comparison to Apple's announcement is the Trackable Key Organizer, because it addresses the actual gap a front-door smart lock leaves open: every other physical key on your ring. Holding up to five keys in a slim leather organizer with Apple Find My built directly in, it's the piece that keeps your car key, office badge, parent's spare, and storage unit key as one trackable object — regardless of whether your own front door ever gets a US-only UWB lock bolted to it. Both products ship now, across the EU and UK, through the same free Find My app already on an iPhone, with no subscription and no separate hardware hub required.
Smart Lock — Find My tracking, available now
A TSA-approved padlock with Apple Find My built directly into the lock body. Different job than a front door — built for luggage, not a deadbolt — but shipping today, across the EU and UK, with no December wait.
Trackable Key Organizer V2 — the keys a front door lock won't touch
Holds up to 5 keys — car, office, a parent's spare, a storage unit — in one leather organizer with Apple Find My built directly in. No separate AirTag, no app beyond the one already on your iPhone, no regional wait.
Apple's smart lock vs. Seekerity's, compared honestly
Laid out side by side, the two products aren't really competing for the same decision — but seeing exactly where they diverge is more useful than either overstating or ignoring the comparison:
| Apple Home Collection Smart Lock | Seekerity Smart Lock | Seekerity Trackable Key Organizer | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it secures | A front door | A suitcase zipper, duffel, or backpack | Nothing — it holds and tracks your existing keys |
| Core technology | UWB proximity sensing for auto-unlock | Apple Find My network | Apple Find My network |
| Trackable via Find My | Not reported | Yes | Yes |
| Physical backup | PIN keypad + concealed key slot | Physical key, TSA master-key accessible | N/A — holds physical keys |
| Price | $349.95 | €44.95 | €49.95 |
| EU/UK availability | Not available; no date given | Available now | Available now |
| Ships | December 2026 (US/Canada) | Now | Now |
| Subscription required | No (Apple Home app) | No (Find My app) | No (Find My app) |
The honest takeaway from that table isn't "buy Seekerity's lock instead of Apple's" — they solve different problems, and if what you actually want is proximity auto-unlock on your own front door, nothing in Seekerity's lineup replicates that feature, full stop. The honest takeaway is that if you were drawn to this announcement because it signaled "UWB-powered, Find My–adjacent convenience is arriving for the things I carry and secure," that convenience is already shipping in the EU and UK today — just not, yet, in the specific shape of a front-door deadbolt.
A decision framework, if you're in the EU or UK
Rather than waiting on a product with no announced regional date, it's worth separating what you're actually trying to solve into pieces that each have a real answer right now:
- If what you want is proximity auto-unlock on your actual front door: there's currently no answer available in the EU or UK from this specific announcement, and no confirmed timeline for one. HomeKit-compatible locks from established manufacturers like Yale, Nuki, or Tado are already sold across Europe and the UK today and offer their own auto-unlock features via Bluetooth or (in some newer models) UWB — worth a look if the front-door convenience itself, rather than specifically Apple-and-LG's version of it, is the goal.
- If what's actually bothering you is losing or misplacing your keys — the car key, the office badge, the spare you can never find in a bag — that's solved today, with Find My already on your iPhone, by a Trackable Key Organizer. This is almost certainly the closer match to the day-to-day frustration a front-door lock announcement tends to surface, even when the lock itself was never the thing actually causing it.
- If you're specifically interested in UWB as a technology and want to see what Precision Finding feels like in practice before any lock decision at all, the AirTag and the new Siri Remote are both shipping in the EU and UK on Apple's normal schedule, with no regional gap to wait out.
- If you travel and the "lock" that actually worries you is a suitcase, not a front door, the Seekerity Smart Lock solves that specific version of the problem today, TSA-approved, with Find My built in — a genuinely different use case from Apple's announcement, but one that's easy to conflate with it given the shared word "lock."
Setting up Find My for the keys a front door still won't cover
Whichever category actually matches your situation, if it involves tracking something through Find My, the setup is the same few minutes regardless of which product you choose:
- Open the Find My app on an iPhone signed in with the Apple ID you want the item tied to.
- Tap the "Items" tab, then "Add Item," and follow the pairing steps for your Trackable Key Organizer or Smart Lock.
- Name it for what it actually holds — "House + Car Keys" or "Checked Suitcase" reads faster in a moment of panic than a generic default name.
- Turn on separation alerts, so you get a notification the moment the item moves further from your iPhone than expected.
- Test it once before relying on it — leave the item in another room and confirm the alert actually fires.
None of this depends on anything Apple announced on October 13, in any region. It's the same free Find My network that's been running since AirTag launched in 2021, independent of whichever smart home hub, lock, or display Apple ships next, and in which country.
Common mistakes worth avoiding with this news
A few reactions to this specific announcement are worth flagging directly, because they're easy, understandable, and not quite right. The first is assuming "Apple announced a smart lock" means a European or UK release is imminent — nothing reported so far supports that, and the clearest statements point the other way, with no date given at all. The second is assuming the lock integrates with Find My simply because it uses UWB — the two are related technologies serving different jobs here, and no source describes the lock as a Find My accessory. The third is treating this as a reason to wait on tracking the keys you already carry — the car key, the office badge, the spare — since nothing about this announcement, in any region, changes how exposed those keys already are to getting lost this week, this month, or this winter.
Frequently asked questions
Did Apple actually announce a smart lock on October 13, 2026?
Yes. Apple confirmed the Apple Home Collection on October 13, 2026, which includes a smart deadbolt lock built with LG Electronics, alongside a video doorbell, several cameras, and thermostats built with LG and Schneider Electric. This moved the story from reported rumor to an official, priced announcement.
How much does Apple's new smart lock cost?
$349.95, according to both Tom's Guide and TechCrunch's coverage. Tom's Guide's article also mentions a $439 figure elsewhere without explaining the discrepancy; $349.95 is the number that appears consistently and is the more reliable figure until Apple or LG publishes an official price list.
Is Apple's smart lock available in the EU or UK?
Not at launch, and no date has been given for either region. Tom's Guide's coverage describes the lock as limited to the US and Canada. Apple's separate HomeView smart home hub, which much of the rest of the collection connects through, has been explicitly confirmed as unavailable in the European Union. Some of the security cameras are referenced for UK availability, but not the lock itself.
Why isn't the lock launching in Europe or the UK?
Apple and LG haven't given a reason. It's consistent with a broader pattern in the smart lock category: electronic door locks require different certifications in the US (UL, ANSI/BHMA) versus the EU and UK (CE marking, national lock and insurance standards, and radio equipment compliance for the UWB hardware specifically), and US retrofit lock designs don't always fit the less standardized door and lock-case dimensions common across European and UK homes. This is informed speculation based on the category's general history, not a confirmed explanation from Apple.
Does the smart lock work with Apple's Find My app?
No integration has been reported. The lock uses ultra-wideband radio for proximity-based auto-unlock — sensing how close a trusted iPhone or Apple Watch is to the door — which is a related but separate use of the same general radio technology behind Find My's Precision Finding. None of the coverage from Tom's Guide, TechCrunch, MacRumors, or Gizmochina describes the lock as a trackable Find My item.
What happens if my phone battery dies — am I locked out?
No. The lock keeps a PIN keypad and a concealed physical keyhole behind a sliding cover as backups, according to Tom's Guide's reporting, so a dead phone battery isn't a lockout scenario.
Who actually manufactures the lock — Apple or LG?
LG Electronics builds and brands the lock, alongside Schneider Electric for some of the climate hardware in the collection. Apple is reported to have helped shape the design, feature set, and engineering, but the product carries LG's branding, not Apple's — the same arrangement Apple has used with HomeKit-certified hardware since 2014, just with reportedly deeper involvement this time.
When does the rest of the Apple Home Collection ship?
December 2026 for most of the lineup — the lock, doorbell, cameras, and thermostats — based on current US/Canada-focused reporting. Apple has also cautioned that some accessories in the collection won't arrive until early 2027. HomeView, the separate smart home hub, ships November 13, 2026, also without EU availability.
Is there any Apple product from this announcement that does reach the EU and UK with Find My built in?
Yes — the new Siri Remote for the refreshed Apple TV 4K, priced at $59, ships with Find My support and Precision Finding on Apple's standard global release schedule, alongside the Apple TV 4K itself and the HomePod mini refresh. None of Apple's own three product launches from this event carry the regional restriction that applies specifically to the LG-built lock and the HomeView hub.
Does a smart front-door lock make tracking my other keys unnecessary?
No. A front-door lock, wherever it's available, secures exactly one door. Your car key, office badge or locker key, a parent's or friend's spare, a storage unit or shed key, a bike lock, and a mailbox key all stay physical and exactly as easy to lose regardless of what happens with any single front door.
What's the difference between the Seekerity Smart Lock and Apple's new smart lock?
They secure entirely different things. Apple and LG's lock is a front-door deadbolt with UWB proximity auto-unlock. The Seekerity Smart Lock is a TSA-approved travel padlock with Apple Find My tracking built into the lock body, designed for a suitcase zipper or duffel bag. They share the word "lock" and, loosely, an interest in the same underlying radio-sensing technology family, but not a job.
Do I need a subscription for the Seekerity Smart Lock or Key Organizer?
No. Both run through Apple's free Find My app, already on any iPhone — no separate app, no monthly fee, and no smart home hub required, unlike several pieces of Apple's new Home Collection which route through the HomeView display.
Are there other smart locks that already work in the EU and UK today?
Yes — HomeKit-compatible locks from manufacturers like Yale, Nuki, and Tado are already sold across Europe and the UK and offer their own auto-unlock features, some via Bluetooth and some via newer UWB implementations. If what you specifically want is front-door proximity unlock and you don't want to wait on Apple and LG's version, these are already purchasable.
Will Apple's smart lock eventually come to Europe or the UK?
Possibly, but there's no announced date, and no outlet we found has reported one, even an approximate one. Treat it as genuinely unannounced rather than confirmed-but-delayed — those are different claims, and only the first is currently supported by the reporting.
What is ultra-wideband (UWB), in plain terms?
It's a short-range radio technology that measures distance and direction between two devices far more precisely than standard Bluetooth. It's what gives AirTag's Precision Finding its directional arrow and distance readout, and what reportedly lets Apple and LG's new lock tell how close a trusted phone is before unlocking automatically.
Does tracking my keys or luggage lock with Find My share the location with Seekerity?
No. Location data travels through Apple's Find My network and is visible only inside the Find My app of the Apple ID the item is paired to — not with Seekerity or any other third party.
Find My coverage that's already shipping — no regional wait
Keys, wallets, and luggage, tracked through the Find My app already on your iPhone.
For the fuller picture of what a UWB-based smart lock does and doesn't change about tracking your keys — written while the product was still rumored — see our earlier guide, Apple's October 13 "Welcome Home" event: what a UWB smart lock means (and doesn't mean) for your keys. For more on the radio technology itself, see which iPhones support the new AirTag's improved Precision Finding.
