Even though the display showed the garage door was fully open, it had started closing but stopped halfway when I hit the skip Homelink icon
I'm confused by this. It seems like the "it had started closing" would have been a problem regardless (unless you happened to break the safety sensor beam soon enough)?
Why did it start closing? Accidental button press (easy to do)? Or something that regularly happened that you had to override?
I was scared about using Auto-close for a long time. I worried about GPS accuracy and a premature close signal. I finally settled on positioning my "home" about 10 feet into my driveway rather than in the garage. That means the car at least has to be further from the house before the auto-close initiates. Compromise between distance out of the driveway and making sure the signal is sent before I turn the car away from the garage door. (Also, too far out and it might think I've already left and trigger the close before I leave the garage, which would be counter productive.)
So far so good, and I love not having to trigger the close manually. I do wish that the Homelink menu overlaid on the rear camera view were more transparent though, or positioned somewhere else, since it interferes with my view of the cul-de-sac as I reverse. And I don't like to even touch that menu until I'm well out of the garage...for the reason you mentioned. Easy enough to tap it to make it go away, but don't want to fat finger it.
In general, I find the rear camera view to be distorted (objects are closer than they appear!) and disorienting (though it is obviously still very useful), so I do try to use both the rearview and the backup camera when backing so I have good situational awareness (rather than the backup camera alone).