Eufy app accessibility with VoiceOver for robot vacuum cleaners

I’ve never heard of this brand. I use Roborock vacuum and it’s very accessible. Also allows me to engage the vacuum with Siri.

Where did you get your vacuum? And, would you send a link to the company's web site. Thanks.

You can find them on amazon. amazon is the best resource for robot vacuums. However, I've heard that the Eufy app is not the best when it comes to accessibility. I'd say go for it and see what happens. just to let you know, you have the screen recognition feature with voiceover, so if things don't work like they should, then you have that option too. I've had shark robots in the past, and i've had to use screen rec before and it just works. Now, I'm using the Mova P10 pro ultra, and it's app is 99% usable provided you use it normally, and a little bit with screen rec, but yeah, it just works. Go ahead and give the Eufy app a try and see what you think.

also, there's a buntch of videos by this just a dad guy on youtube, and he goes over the robot vacuums, which ones to get, which to avoid, etc. I'd check his channel out for info. Also, want to clairify here, he doesn't talk about accessibility on his stuff, so buyer beware! It's odd, some of the chinese robot vacuum apps are the most accessibile, hmm! Seriously, I'd give eufy a go and see what you think. It might not be the most accessible, but if you can make it work, that's the main thing.

I would like to someday have something like a Roomba. So when I saw Camilla's post, I was curious. Thanks, Justin for the information.

Hi. I recently bought the Eufy G50 smart vacuum and, although it's pretty basic, for the price of £99 I'm happy with it. As for the Eufy app, well, it's not a great accessible experience but it is usable. There is a few unlabelled buttons that have their corresponding text labels further down the list but it's pretty easy to work out what label goes with what button. Of course, if you have a smart speaker, you can enable the Eufy Clean skill and use that to start cleaning, send it back to the charger and make it beep like a crazy robot when you can't find it! I have used the Roomba app in the past and it was much better for accessibility, but that may have changed and of course, they are much more expensive. Good luck.

The thing is if you want to use mopping, you are most likely going to want to make a map. I can't imagine how one would do this with VoiceOver, and the RoboRock app can't. You needed sighted assistance. But a one time thing so not a huge deal if you can find a helper. Be sure to make good names for each room/area.
The issue I have encountered with the RoboRock app after having a semblance of an app and selecting which rooms to clean, is if the app decides to scroll or zoom in on the map or otherwise move it so not all rooms are visible on the screen, it is not possible to fix this wiht VoiceOver.
Now some robot vacuum mop combos are smarter than mine and you might have more confidence in letting it figure out what to mop. The bigger thing is dragging the mop around, and some robots now lift them up high enough. Mine is older as you may have guessed.

the Mova one I have does a great job in regards to mapping the rooms and figuring out what to do when it comes to getting around my floor plan. True, the Eufy app isn't the best when it comes to usability, but it works. And yes, the more higher end eufy's have voice prompts instead of the older beeps and stuff like that. I'd recommend a robot that has a fully automated dock station that automatically sucks out the debris and cleans the mops for you, plus dries them. They really take out the labor of cleaning the mop pads all the time and leaving them out for a day or so to dry. Really, the only negative thing I have with my Mova P10 pro ultra is the filter inside the dust bin is quite small, so when it's cleaning carpet, it gets clogged pretty easily, and when it auto empties the dust bin it can't really get the carpet residue off the filter. But other than that, it's a smooth experience. And, yes, the map part is not usable whatsoever, I just either put the robot wherever I wanna clean, or just let it figure out what to do once i tell it what task to do, either vacuum, mop, vacuum and mop, or use the clean genius feature in the mova app itself. Eufy really makes great robots and they're getting better as time rolls forward, but I like my Mova experience so far. Now if only the voice volume on the robot was able to be adjusted again, that'd be really nice!!! it used to be accessible in terms of adjusting it with the slider, but that's now not working, apparently lol!!

Hello,

I have been using robotic cleaners for fifteen years. I started with iRobot devices. I had a vacuum and a mop device, separate devices. At the time, there were no vacuum-mop combos. I was happy with them, but accessibility was rather limited. I could create a weekly schedule, and control them using Amazon Alexa. However, as they started to wear out and needed maintenance I began to look around.

The vacuum cleaner base kept reporting that it was clogged when it was not. I could never figure out why and never got the error fixed. The left wheel on the mop began to report errors and the mop would do little more than charge off the charging station and stop. I called iRobot customer service for a replacement wheel, and they told me to look on Amazon.

Amazon is a great resource for certain things, but in the area of technology, it is replete with counterfeit operators. For example, I bought a set of knives with a famous brand name for a really low price. Quality knives are forged carefully, and can hold a sharp edge for years with a little tlc. The knives that came in were not forged, but stamped and were rather cheap and flexible. They did not hold an edge. So I am reluctant to purchase anything on Amazon of this nature sight unseen. So instead of purchasing a left wheel for my mop and a new clean base for my vacuum, I retired the lot out to the dump.

The Roborock were a revelation in my opinion. When you first get it, send it out to map the home. It will go out and explore every nick and cranny of your floor plan, and it creates a map on its own. The map is divided into neat little rooms. It does not separate closets from the main room, or separate really large spaces, but the iRobot does not even do this much. Then tell the robot to go and clean a room, and follow it to see which room it goes to. Then label that room--e.g., kitchen. Send it out to clean the next space, and then follow it to see where it goes and then label it and so on. And once you have all the rooms labeled, you can use Alexa to to tell the robot to go and clean such and such room. I could never do this with the iRobot.

The other thing I like about Roborock is that you can put it down anywhere in the floor plan on the map and tell it to return to dock. It will then do a bit of exploring, and figure out it where it is on its own, and return to the dock. The iRobot never could do this either. You had to drop the iRobot down within sight of the dock to have it go home. And I place my charging stations in well hidden spaces where it is not exactly easy to just put the robot on the dock without moving some furniture.

And finally, the iRobot does not learn from the places where it gets stuck, and keeps getting stuck in the same places over and over again. The Roborock never gets stuck twice in the same places, and far less frequently than the iRobot. The iRobot would get stuck once or twice a week. The Roborocks, after an initial learning break-in period have not gotten stuck in the past six months.

Also, if you live alone like I do, I recommend you purchase an Apple air tag and an appropriate air tag container to attach it to the robot so you can use the "Find my" function on your iPhone to locate the robot when it does get stuck. Sometimes my dogs--clever little animals--will engage with the robots in such a manner that it gets confused and stops. One of them even figured out out to open the top of te mop on the iRobot halting it in its tracks.

I have an ultra S7 vacuum-mop combo on the main floor, and a vacuum only robot in the basement. I am quite happy with them.

feofil

If memory serves, didn't apple add the ability to control vacumes like roomba etc directly from the native ios home app? Couldn't you use this instead of the vacume's native app if the native app is in accessible? Thinking of getting a vacume like roomba or similar so hense my asking.
For those who have robot vacumes that mop? Apart from roborock, any other brands you recommend? Tbh I've no idea whatexact brands we have where I live and bringing it via amazon... I mean if it can be packed in a suitcase it works but bringing things to my country via amazon while possible is quite pricy and a hastle so if possible, i'd prefer avoiding that if I can buy it locally, but i'll have to see. Also, any ones that aren't insanely pricy? I mean if its a solid option I wouldn't mind spending a bit, but preferably not over $1000.

I have not heard of a robot vacuum adding HomeKit support yet. That isn't to say one doesn't exist, but you'd want to search carefully. This should expand soon as Threads is becoming more widely adopted, and even Apple mentioned it in their iPhone keynote last week. SO while I am not sure you can do this yet, probably in the next two or three years Apple's Home app will be an option.

The following link may give you guys more context.
https://9to5mac.com/2025/06/17/best-homekit-robot-vacuums/#:~:text=Which%20robot%20vacuums%20support%20HomeKit,Deebot%20X2%20Omni

Hello,

I live in a smart home. Every single light bulb or switch can be controlled by Amazon Alexa. Smart thermostat controller. Smart locks and garage controllers. Door contact sensor and security alarm setup. And so on. I use a platform to do almost everything. I mention this to give you an indication of the experience I have built up over the past ten years. I want to give you a few warning shots.

First of all, my initial setup used homekit to control everything. Then Apple, back around iOS 12.0 or so, decided to redesign the homekit ecoSystem, wiping out my elaborate setup completely. Nothing from the old version of homekit migrated to the new version. Absolutely a complete wipeout. And the new version did not offer any new value added features worth mentioning. That's when I bout my first hubitat controller. Hubitat has its flaws, but it is simple and straightforward to implement with a novice level of understanding. I mean novice, as in one step above a beginner. One needs to understand that some devices use zigbee, others use z-wave, and so on. You do not need to know how to program in these protocols. All you need to know is the different methods of pairing your new device to the controller. The hubitat interface is quite helpful about some of this, but it has its limitation. And 90% of the devices you add to hubitat can be pushed up the home app on your iPhone using hubitat as a bridge. And I would say that is probably a tenfold increase in the number of devices you can add to the home app.

Please do not confuse this with adding these devices to homekit. They are not being added to the home app via homekit. Homekit is a protocol just like zigbee and z-wave. The bridge is simply making the devices visible to the home app via a homekit connection between the home device and hubitat.

The limitation of the hubitat controller is that most sighted users use customizable dashboards to interface with the devices. This is a highly visual interface that is not worth the time climbing up its learning curve for me. I use the hubitat homeket integration app to populate the home app on my iPhone, and I use my iPhone as my dashboard. It works quite well for my purposes. All of my rules and automations are on the hubitat controller. No rules or automations are in the home app. None. So the next time Apple decides to redesign the home app and the homekit protocol, I have lost nothing.

Secondly, many smart device vendors are backing away from third party API access. What this means is that independent smart home controllers like hubitat, homebridge, and hoobs are being cutoff from supporting their devices. A developer on a controller uses the Application Programing Interface--API--to control the device. These vendors include Lutron, Liftmaster Garage Door Openers, and especially EUFY. There used to be a way to add EUFY devices to the hubitat controller, but no more. Lutron used to allow this, but no more. The older Lutron hubs allow it, but the new cacheta controller does not. Liftmaster was particularly nasty about it. When I bought my Liftmaster , one could purchase a Liftmaster homebridge hub to allow the home app to control the garage door. Not only did Liftmaster suspend its third party API, but they disabled their own external hub. I now use Tailwind to control my garage door, and I could have implemented Tailwind on my original 1951 garage door opener without first buying the liftmaster.

So beware that some smart home vendors are cutting off their third party API to eliminate the costs of maintaining this level of customer support.

They EUFY app has limited accessibility. It is not trivial to add a camera to the one's home. Some devices require a EUFY hub called Homebase 2, Homebase 360, or so on. I recently upgraded to the homebase 360 in preparation for some of the newer cameras that have come on the market recently. I used an old HOOBS hub to connect the EUFY camaras to the home app. The benefit of doing this was to be able to get a meaningful indicator of the battery level on the cameras. The indicators on the EUFY app are meaningless to voice over users The HOOBS is rather an expensive method for this simple benefit, but I has one leftover from the original hubitat system .which required the HOOBS in between the hubitat and the home app. Fortunately for new hubitat users, the HOOBS is no longer necessary for this function as the hubitat now provides direct access to the home app.

Now to document the difficulty of adding a camera to the EUFY app. First locate the code ion on the camera. Then go to "Add Device" on the EUFY app. Then can in the code into the vamera on your iPhone. Then EUFY generates a second code which appears on the iPhone screen. You then have to scan this code into the camera on the device. None of these steps are trivial, and take quite a bit of guesswork on the part of the blind user to line up correctly. The doorbell cams--with their multiple cameras are quite challenging.

feofil

Alexa is boss for home automation.
I too have aN Alexa home, as it is just so easy to automate ones dwelling with Alexa. The one thing I don't do, however, is have my lights control with Alexa. In my situation, I live in an apartment with 10 foot high ceilings, and due to an old knee injury, I do not trust myself on a step ladder.
On the flipside, there is a couple I'm friends with, that live a few minutes from me, and they live in an old two-story house with a basement. I think the house was built either in the late 1800s or early 1900s, but it was built without light switches. Every light fixture in their house, has some kind of pool cord system, or else a switch directly on the light fixture itself. So they have all of their lights automated through Alexa, as well as other appliances and such.
Then there is another couple I am friends with, their house has a security system with cameras, which they can use either and Alexa show (I think it's the Alexa show, the one with the screen), or their smart phones to monitor the different cameras around their property.

Alexa is great as a voice assistant. However, at the time I was creating my smart home, it was not exactly secure. For example, if you left home , a thief could shout through the window, "Unlock the front door!" and if they shouted loud enough, Alexa would oblige. They have fixed this problem by adding a security code that you can add for each security device.

My problem with Alexa is the app itself. Open the device page, and you have to drill down through all the groups to get to the first device. And the device are listed in the newest added first and last added last. With over 200 devices in my home, this can be quite cumbersome. It is possible to change the sort order, and filter for certain device types and so on, but each time you are done with a device and exit the device page and go back to the device main page, there you are--back at the top of the device page and you have to drill down through all the groups again.

Hubitat has a built-in Alexa app. Just add your device to the list in the app, and suddenly it is added to Alexa. Very simple.

Hubitat has, in addition, one of the most powerful rule engines. For example, on Apple Home, if you wanted to create a device activated rule, you could only add one device as the trigger. I have several rules in my home that are triggered by any one of several devices, and some rules that are triggered by all of a list of devices. There are periodic rules, temperature based rules. For example, I have a Tibetan Buddhist shrine room which is screened off from the rest of the house by a heavy door curtain. This door curtain created problems with climate control in the room. So I have a temperature sensor in the room that activated a small single-room radiator. And what temperature does it set the room to? The rule reads the heat set point off the thermostat and keeps the room at that temperature. So when I go into that room, i never notice a difference in the climate in the room.

My main purpose in automating my home was twofold. First, when I needed sighted assistance from a neighbor or friend, that person would turn on a light. Then forget to turn it off. Some of my lights would remain on for months before I would discover this. So automating my home to turn off all the lights every night saved me over fifty dollars a month in electric bills and the cost of replacing burned out bulbs. I do not
exaggerate here. I documented this.

The second reason I automated my home was to crate scenes where the lights would come on in the evening and then get turned off at night when presumably people went to bed, The goal was to make the home look lived in from the outside as a deterrence against burglars. A home that is always dark is a magnet to burglars. And there is some randomization built into the pattern as well.

The other problem I have with Alexa is that I prefer web-based interfaces to iOS apps. A few years ago, Alexa had a really cool web-based interface that was kind of fun to use. However, Amazon decided to get rid of it, and gradually removed funtionality from it until it was gone. The hubitat is primarily a web-based device. There is an app for it, but I do not use it except for geofencing with my iPhone.

To each his own.

feofil

Agreed. The Alexa app is a nightmare to navigate. I don't believe I have more than 20 devices connected to Alexa, couldn't even imagine 200. However, once something is connected and setup the way you need it on Alexa, it's pretty straightforward to use. For what it's worth, even my sighted friends complain about the layout of the Alexa app, and how cluttered it feels to them.
Oh, and don't even get me started on sighted folks who love to leave lights on when they leave. 😖

I got a low-end basic Roomba for Christmas a couple of years ago. I was able to set it up independently, and the app lets me know when my roomba is on its charger correctly; it will also notify me if the roomba gets lost or its battery dies. As others have said, I typically ask Alexa to start the roomba for me, and it works out very well. Some day, when finances permit, I'd love to upgrade to a model that can actually map layouts and maneuver around obsticales rather than just wandering aimlessly and getting stuck under furniture. I'll be following this thread for sure, just in case another app out there is better than roomba. I've visited the youtube channel that was mentioned here in the past, but think it might be fun to go back there and find out what new models of robot vacuums are available now.

after reading the first few posts on this thread, I started looking at robot vacuums on Amazon. I ended up buying a LEFANT vacuum because it was only $88.. It works great, but, I can’t get the app to work properly. The edit field where you are supposed to type the one time code will not open. I will have a sighted person look at it one of these days. Otherwise, I just push the button and it starts doing its little twisty thing as it cleans. Therefore, I call it chubby checker.