Apple announced HomeView on October 13, 2026: a $299, 7-inch smart display that ships November 13, with Calendar built in. The first question from sports families was predictable — is this the Skylight killer? The honest answer is that they’re two different ideas of what a family display is for, and the differences matter more than the price gap.
Below is what Apple has actually said about HomeView, what Skylight does today, and the part we care most about: however you get your kids’ schedules onto either screen, they have to be right first.
Updated October 15, 2026, from Apple’s published materials. HomeView ships November 13; we’ll revise this page the week it arrives.
Apple HomeView: $299 (U.S.) for either model — the tabletop HomeView with its speaker base, or the wall-mounted HomeView. Apple sells its Power Mount wall connectors separately, starting at $59.95.
Skylight: $180–$380 for the display depending on size, and the headline features (Magic Import, meal planning, chore rewards) need Skylight Plus at $79/year. Calendar syncing is part of the base experience.
Apple HomeView: A 7-inch square Liquid Retina display (1088 by 1088 pixels). Apple pitches it as central to the home and personal to everyone in it, with faces like Calendar and Weather you can choose for the screen.
Skylight: A big touchscreen built for the kitchen wall — glanceable for everyone at home, with the calendar, chores, and photos on one always-on display.
Apple HomeView: Pre-orders opened October 13, 2026; it ships November 13, 2026. It requires an iPhone with iOS 27.2 or later, or an iPad with iPadOS 27.2 or later, and Apple is not selling it in the European Union.
Skylight: On sale now. You set it up and manage its calendars from the Skylight app on a phone or computer; it connects to Google, Apple, or Outlook calendars, or subscribes to a calendar feed URL directly.
Apple HomeView: Personal. Up to six household members enroll through the Home app, and each person sees their own Calendar when HomeView recognizes their face and their paired iPhone or iPad is on the same Wi-Fi and was recently unlocked. The one household-wide spot Apple describes is the Modular face: it holds up to four widgets from different members’ iPhones, and per Apple’s developer guidelines, “if someone places a Calendar widget on the Modular face, that person’s calendar appears there for everyone.”
Skylight: Shared. Whatever calendars you connect and toggle on for display are what everyone at home sees on the wall — one view.
Apple HomeView: Calendar is a built-in app, but there is no App Store — Apple’s specs list 15 built-in apps plus a few apps available from your iPhone. Apple says HomeView syncs with each person’s iPhone or iPad and shows their personal content, Calendar included — so the practical path is: get the schedule into the Calendar app on the iPhone you pair with it. (Apple hasn’t said whether subscribed or Google calendars show up; see the note below.)
Skylight: Paste a calendar feed URL into the Skylight app (My Skylight → Synced Calendars → Sync new calendar → Calendar URL), or connect the Google, Apple, or Outlook calendar the schedule already lives in, then toggle it on for display.
Apple HomeView: Apple hasn’t said how often HomeView refreshes a calendar, or whether it tells you when something changed.
Skylight: The display updates when the synced calendar does — Skylight doesn’t publish an interval for URL-synced calendars — and nothing tells you what changed.
HomeView details from Apple’s product page, tech specs, Apple Store FAQ, Newsroom release, and Human Interface Guidelines, read October 15, 2026. Skylight details from Skylight’s official support pages and retail listings, verified August 2026. Apple HomeView and Skylight are trademarks of their owners; we’re not affiliated with either — just answering the question families keep asking.
As of October 15, 2026, Apple hasn’t said whether subscribed (webcal/ICS) calendars or Google and Outlook accounts show on HomeView, how often it refreshes a calendar, or whether there’s a household-wide family calendar beyond the Modular face widget. Everything on this page about getting a schedule onto HomeView is based on how HomeView reads the Calendar app on your paired iPhone, per Apple — and we’ll confirm it on a real HomeView the week it ships.
Skylight starts from the wall. One shared calendar that everyone in the house sees the same way, with chores, meals, and photos built around it. You connect calendars to the display, toggle them on, and the kitchen has one view everyone glances at.
HomeView starts from the person. Apple’s own words are “central to the home and personal to everyone in it”: it recognizes up to six enrolled household members by face, and shows each of them their own Calendar, Messages, and Reminders when their paired iPhone is nearby and recently unlocked. The shared surface Apple describes is one Modular face per household, where one member’s Calendar widget can appear for everyone.
Neither idea solves the problem that sends sports parents looking for a wall display in the first place: three kids on five team apps, a school calendar that only exists as a PDF, and a coach who moves Saturday’s game on Thursday night. Both screens show whatever calendar they’re handed. The work is upstream.
Schedule Caddie is free. Paste every team app’s calendar link (20+ platforms, with step-by-step guides), upload the school PDF, and you get one merged color-coded calendar for the whole family plus an email naming exactly what changed when a time moves. Then hand that one feed to the display:
Copy your All Events feed link from Subscribe & Share, then in the Skylight app: My Skylight menu → Synced Calendars → Sync new calendar → Calendar URL → paste → Done. No Google account needed in the middle. The full setup, with the Google/Apple/Outlook route if you prefer it, is in sports schedules on a Skylight Calendar.
Subscribe to your Schedule Caddie feed in the Calendar app on the iPhone you’ll pair with HomeView — Settings → Apps → Calendar → Calendar Accounts → Add Account → Other → Add Subscribed Calendar — and when it asks which account to add it to, choose iCloud. Apple’s support guide says a subscription stored in iCloud appears across all of your devices.
That puts the schedule in the Calendar app on the phone Apple says HomeView syncs with. Whether it then shows on the HomeView screen is the part Apple hasn’t said, and the part we’ll confirm the week it ships — the step itself is right either way. Details in sports schedules on Apple HomeView.
We’re not going to call it one. Apple describes HomeView as a smart display that is central to the home and personal to everyone in it — Calendar, Messages, FaceTime, smart-home control — where each person’s content appears for them. Skylight is a shared family calendar on the wall, with chores and meal planning around it. They overlap on “a calendar on a screen in the kitchen” and diverge almost everywhere else. Nobody outside Apple’s demo spaces has lived with a HomeView yet, so any ranking today would be guesswork.
Apple hasn’t said. As of October 15, 2026, none of Apple’s HomeView pages mention Google, Outlook, or subscribed calendars. What Apple has said is that HomeView syncs with your paired iPhone or iPad and shows your personal content, Calendar included. We have a separate page that walks through exactly what is known, what isn’t, and how to be ready either way.
Not in the way Skylight does. Apple describes Calendar on HomeView as personal content, shown to the person it recognizes. The closest thing to a household view Apple has documented is the Modular face: one per household, up to four widgets from different members’ iPhones, and if someone places a Calendar widget there, that person’s calendar appears for everyone. That is Apple’s wording, and we’re not reading more into it until we can test it.
No. Calendar syncing is part of the base Skylight experience — connecting Google, Apple, or Outlook calendars and pasting a feed URL both work without Plus. Plus ($79/year) covers extras like Magic Import, meal planning, and chore rewards.
We can’t say that yet, and we won’t until we’ve seen it on a real HomeView. What we can say: your Schedule Caddie feed subscribes into the Calendar app on your iPhone today, Apple says HomeView syncs with that paired phone to show your Calendar, and choosing iCloud as the subscription’s account keeps it across all of your Apple devices per Apple’s support guide. That is the prep step on this page. We’ll confirm the display half the week HomeView ships.
HomeView details are from Apple’s product page, tech specs, Apple Store FAQ, October 13 Newsroom release, and Human Interface Guidelines, read October 15, 2026 — nothing from hands-on reviews, because there aren’t any yet. Skylight details are from Skylight’s own support pages and 2026 retail listings, checked August 2026. If either company changes something, tell us and we’ll update this page.
Every kid, every schedule, every app — merged, color-coded, and watched for changes.
Get Started FreeWant to see it first? Explore a real family's calendar — no account needed.
Team apps, school calendars, and paper schedules — merged, color-coded, change-alerted.