Just a few days before Apple's annual WWDC event kicks off on June 7, mentions of an unannounced operating system called homeOS have been spotted online.

The mentions of homeOS appear in an Apple job listing for a senior iOS engineer in the Apple Music division, based in Cupertino, California. HomeOS was first spotted by developer Javier Lacort, who posted about his discovery on Twitter.

Read More:

• How to set up and use Apple HomeKit adaptive lighting in your smart home
• Why we think Apple should make a smart home display
• The new Apple TV 4K has Thread – here is why that matters for your smart home

Addressed to applicants for the vacancy, the job advert stated: "You'll get to work with system engineers across Apple, learning the inner-workings of iOS, watchOS, tvOS and homeOS, and optimizing your code for performance in ways only Apple can."

The advert continues: "The Apple Music Frameworks team owns the technology stack that enables the system-integrated Apple Music experience on all of our mobile platforms: iOS, watchOS, and homeOS."

The listing has since been edited by Apple to replace the first mention of homeOS with HomePod and to remove the second mention entirely. While at first this could look like an innocent mistake, the listing makes less sense now, as the HomePod product is no longer sold by Apple (instead the HomePod Mini stands alone in the company's speaker range). The mention of homeOS also comes soon after Apple was rumored to be working on a Nest Hub-style device combining an iPad with a HomePod.

Additionally, if anything were to fit in that sentence with iOS, watchOS and tvOS, it would be HomeKit, Apple's smart home system that connects devices like smart lights and security cameras to the Home app for iOS and Mac.

To us, it looks like Apple is at the very least rebranding HomeKit as homeOS. But, naturally, we hope this is an indication that Apple is finally hauling itself into the smart home market with more energy than before, and directly taking on Amazon and Google with their respective Alexa and Home/Nest systems.

Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference kicks off with a keynote address led by CEO Tim Cook on Monday, June 7. Always a software-focused event, we hope to learn more about homeOS then.