AppleInsider is supported by its audience and may earn commission as an Amazon Associate and affiliate partner on qualifying purchases. These affiliate partnerships do not influence our editorial content. The center of a connected smart home could soon be the Apple TV, as Apple’s latest beta software officially brings HomeKit support to its $99 streaming set-top box. As first discovered by AppleInsider , Apple’s own notes for Apple TV Software beta 2 released on Tuesday note that the pre-release build “includes support for Family Sharing and can be used for testing AirPlay and HomeKit with your iOS apps.” Apple had acknowledged as much in one prerelease version of the Apple TV operating system, but appeared to remove the functionality when released last month. In other previous beta releases, HomeKit support was included, but Apple did not acknowledge that support was baked in to the Apple TV operating system. With HomeKit’s public return to the Apple TV, one iOS developer on the internal Apple development forums has detailed how the system works. Logging into iCloud on an Apple TV will register the set-top box as a potential remote access peer for the HomeKit application programming interface. Once the user accepts using…