If your smart home is going to be complete, you need a smart lock for your sliding door. I found a few ideas that might work, but the most promising product is AWOL (for the moment).
When you started looking for a smart lock for your sliding door, you were probably looking for a smart lock that could either
a) replace the lock on your door or
b) attach to the existing locking mechanism to operate it remotely.
That’s basically how smart locks are done for standard swing open doors. Unfortunately, options like that for sliding doors are seriously limited.
This is most likely because the locking mechanisms for sliding doors don’t have a standard size. That makes creating a one-size-fits-all smart lock quite difficult. An alternative is to create different sized smart locks for each brand of door, but that is cost-prohibitive.
One way to get around the problem of non-standard sized locks on sliding doors is to avoid the lock latch altogether.
I found an automatic door slider which acts as an automatic opener and a lock.
The auto-opener attaches to the door frame. The opener only moves under the power of the motor. Therefore, if you try to open the door manually, it will not budge. It is effectively locked.
Anyway, enough of me rambling on. Here’s the list of smart locks for sliding doors that you came for:
Lockly Guard
Lockly is one of the top smart lock brands. They sell high-quality locks to both residential customers and commercial customers.
And apparently, they sell a smart lock for sliding doors. It’s called the Lockly Guard.
I say apparently because I have searched high and low to find a single place that sells the Lockly Guard to consumers, but I came up empty. After I searched in vain, I contacted Lockly and they confirmed that the Guard has not been released yet.
The Lockly Guard looks great and it’s probably exactly what you’re looking for. But, for the moment, you’ll have to keep waiting.
Wayzn Smart Pet Door
The Wayzn Smart Pet Door is an auto-opener that is marketed as an automatic pet door. But who says it can’t be used for humans, too!
Wayzn installs without any permanent damage to your door. When not needed (or in an emergency) it quickly folds out of the way so the door can be operated manually.
It connects to WiFi, which means you can operate the door using the app and also using Alexa.
There is an option for the door to be activated by a motion sensor, but that seems completely impractical to me. I’m imagining myself standing in my underwear, sipping my morning coffee, and gazing out the patio door. It’s a balmy January morning with a -10F wind chill when suddenly the door slides open and I get an arctic blast right in the face and all my nether-regions. No thanks. I do not need my patio door (or any door for that matter) motion activated.
Wayzn could certainly be great as an automatic pet door, or even for someone with mobility difficulties. However, I feel like it’s a bit of a compromise if what you really want is a smart sliding door lock. I fear that the automatic opening and closing gets in the way of normal operation too much. In my house, the Wayzn would most likely be flipped up to allow for manual operation 90% of the time.
Shop for Wayzn Smart Pet Door at Wayzn.com
Haven Lock
If you don’t have any mobility challenges to solve, and you don’t want/need an automatic pet door, then the automatic door above may be more of a pain than anything.
The Haven Lock attaches to the door frame kind of like the auto-opener. However, it doesn’t have the motor to open/close the door. Instead, it either pops up to block the door from sliding open, or retracts to allow the door to slide over it and open.
In order to use the Haven lock on a sliding door, you first need the sliding door adapter. Once Haven is installed, you could leave the door’s original latch unlocked and instead use Haven as the locking mechanism for the door. Haven Connect is available with WiFi or Z-Wave, so it could integrate easily with your smart home. You can also purchase an optional keyfob.
I think the Haven lock is awesome, and it’s great at stopping brute force entry on standard swing open doors. But, using it on a sliding door doesn’t give you the same security “boost” over the standard hook latch on most sliding doors. Where I come from, almost all sliding doors are made of glass, which means an intruder could simply bust the glass instead of going through the effort of trying to force the door open.
That said, the Haven lock does give you a legitimate option to add smart locking capability to your sliding door. The option to get it with the Z-wave module ensures that you have full home automation capabilities.
Plus, Haven is an American company owned and operated by veterans.
Shop for Haven Connect at havenlock.com
DIY
Clearly, the commercially available options for smart locks on sliding doors are pretty limited. However, if you’re dead-set on giving your sliding door a smart lock, maybe you can do it yourself? The Hook Up on YouTube has a cool video where he hooks up an electric drop bolt to his patio door and controls it using a Shelly relay. Here’s the video.
Everything you need to make the lock can be purchased for way under $100. Here’s an Amazon shopping list to complete the project:
Final Thoughts
I’ve been following home automation on Reddit for years and one topic that seems to come up again and again is people looking for a smart lock for their sliding doors.
Myself and many others are still patiently waiting for a true smart lock for sliding doors to hit the market.
It seems like Lockly Guard is the one, but until you can actually buy one, I guess we’ll just have to wait longer. In the meantime, Wayzn and Haven are workable options.
When you mention time, as in “I searched but it’s not available yet”, you need to be sure that your article has a date on it somewhere. For all I know you wrote this 5 years ago, or last week.
Good point!
So that Lockly Guard may not be released but there are about 30 on Amazon that look exactly like it, some that have been there for over a year begging the question, who’s copying who. I also question why a company that is supposed to be that good is using obvious fake reviews with fake names and stock photos. I know this much; I wouldn’t trust any of the Chinese owned companies to secure my home, at least not using and app and a bridge linked to any of my Smart Home accounts.
I agree with your sentiment completely. I very much prefer to use a local protocol such as Z-Wave. However, in this case there are so few locks that are made for sliding doors that I basically just listed anything I could find that might work.
Drop bolt, i.e. electric deadbolts which drop down and retract back up are extremely dangerous and can bind up in an emergency when you need to get out immediately. They are not really for people-traffic doors. More designed for locking a closet or a cabinet where no person can get trapped inside. Ask ANY lock professional.
I assume you are referring to a fail secure device as opposed to a fail safe device, or is there more to it?
How can I purchase one of these devices.
Which one?