How to Use Your Smart Garage Door Controller Better

Why it’s helpful: It’s easy to walk into your home carrying bags of groceries and forget to shut the door once you’re inside. This security trick ensures that your garage door remembers to close itself, even when you forget to hit the button.

How to do it: Set a schedule in your controller’s app to close your door every night at a set time. Alternatively, if your controller supports a digital assistant like Amazon Alexa or Apple HomeKit, you can create an automation that closes it at a set time or at sunset—or even use a voice command to make it close on demand. If you prefer to do it yourself, you could instead set a digital assistant like Alexa to give you a reminder every night.

If you have night owls in the family who often arrive home after dark and forget to shut the door, our top pick, the Tailwind iQ3, has an excellent feature called Night Mode that automatically shuts the door after five minutes if it’s opened during a set time period (such as 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.).

Why it’s helpful: Hitting a visor button as you drive away is hardly a chore, yet everybody forgets to do it occasionally. Instead, set your smart controller to close the door automatically when you leave, and you’ll never need worry again—some models can even open the door just as you arrive home.

How to do it: Our top-pick garage-door controller, the Tailwind iQ3, is one model that can handle this automation without needing to use a third-party service. To set it up, just tap Add a Vehicle in the app, and from then on the controller will recognize your car (based on your car’s Bluetooth ID or an optional presence sensor) and will open or close the door as you arrive or leave (you can decide).

If you have a HomeKit-enabled controller, you can accomplish the same thing, only you need to answer a prompt on your iPhone or Apple Watch before the door triggers. IFTTT, a web-based service that connects smart devices, also has a geolocation feature (it senses your arrival and departure based on the location of your smartphone); we have found that it can be a bit spotty, however, so we don’t recommend it for a task like this that involves security.

Why it’s helpful: Just like a smart door lock, a smart garage-door controller provides a convenient way for you to let trusted people—a neighbor, relatives, a dog walker, or a landscaper—into your home without needing to give out copies of keys or to issue passcodes.

How to do it: In your door controller’s app, look for a “Users” or “Share” option to invite others to access your door via email. They then need to download an app and create an account. From then on, they’ll be able to trigger your garage door based on access settings you customize—you can opt to limit when and for how long they have access, and you have a record of whenever they trigger the door.

Why it’s helpful: With any tech, and especially wireless devices, sometimes things just go wrong. A false sensor reading, for example, could cause you to inadvertently open your garage door while thinking you’re closing it. A Wi-Fi camera in your garage lets you check in and see whether the door really is closed, providing extra peace of mind.

How to do it: Our runner-up pick, the Chamberlain MyQ Smart Garage Control, has its own optional smart garage camera, but any Wi-Fi–based camera with motion-activated recording can do pretty much the same thing—our pick is the $40 Eufy 2K. Once you set the camera up, point it at your door, and it will send alerts whenever the door opens or closes. And at any time you can check in to see live footage just in case.

If a camera seems like overkill, you could just pop an extra smart sensor on the garage door. Roost’s $40 tilt sensor can send alerts to your smartphone when your door opens or closes. It’s a bit steep, but it doesn’t require a hub, and in our tests it worked reliably.