Can you find your HomeKit setup code in the Apple Home app?

No. If an accessory is already paired to your home, the Apple Home app will not show you its setup code. There is no “reveal code” button in the accessory settings, no long-press shortcut, nothing tucked away in a submenu. Apple never built the feature, and Home does not hand the code to third-party apps either.

This surprises people because the code feels like it must be saved somewhere. You typed it in once. Home clearly knows the accessory exists. So where did the eight digits go?

They did their job and stopped mattering.

Why Apple Home does not keep the code

The setup code is a shared secret. During pairing, your phone and the accessory use it to prove to each other that they are in the same room and that you are allowed to add the device. Once that handshake is done, a cryptographic pairing takes over and the original number is never needed again.

So iOS does not keep it. There is nothing to look up, because Home stores the pairing, not the digits you typed to create it. Apple treats the code as a setup-time secret and deliberately never surfaces it afterwards, to any app. Factory reset the accessory and you are back to needing the original printed code, from wherever it was on the box or the body.

The Matter exception: Turn On Pairing Mode

If the accessory speaks Matter rather than classic HomeKit, Home can produce a code. It just is not the one on the sticker.

Touch and hold the accessory, open its settings, scroll to the bottom and tap Turn On Pairing Mode. Home shows a QR code and an eleven-digit number, with a Copy Code button. This exists for multi-admin, so you can add the same accessory to Alexa, Google Home or SmartThings without removing it from Apple first.

Two catches. The code is generated fresh each time, not read back off the device, so it will not match anything printed on the accessory. And it expires after a few minutes, so start the process on the other platform before you tap it.

Classic HomeKit accessories have nothing like this. No pairing mode, no code, no export.

The one screen that does show a code

An Apple TV acting as a home hub will show its own HomeKit setup code, under Settings, then AirPlay and HomeKit. That is tvOS displaying Apple’s code for Apple’s hardware, so you can add the Apple TV itself to a home. It is not a pattern that extends to the bulbs and plugs around the house.

When you need the real code

For anything other than Matter multi-admin, you need the original printed code, off the accessory, the box, or the manual. If all three are gone, there are still a few ways to recover it, and one detour that works when there is no readable copy left anywhere. That is a separate job, covered in our guide to finding a lost HomeKit or Matter setup code.