I’m a Long-Time Philips Hue User, and Here Are Six of My Favorite Features
Among smart bulbs, few have the robust software (or price tag) of Philips Hue . The company has established itself as the standard-bearer for what smart bulbs can be. However, after years of adding new features, there are quite a few that aren’t as useful as others. These are the ones that I, as a long-time Hue owner, use on a regular basis.
Some of this will vary slightly depending on your mileage. For my money, the feature that lets you create colorful scenes based on a photo is great as a party trick (if your party is boring), but it’s not all that useful when there’s already a huge library of scenes to choose from. You might disagree! But I’ve been using Hue lights for almost as long as they’ve been around, and these are my favorite features.
Schedule the light to come on slowly to wake you up…
Waking up to bright lights in the morning is a terrible way to wake up, at least for me. And if you’re in the same boat, the Hue app’s soft-start timer is a handy solution. In the Automation tab, tap the + icon and tap Wake Up with Lights. Select a room, and you can set a specific time and date for the lights to turn on in that room.
The cool thing is that you can tap the Fade Duration setting to slowly fade the light in. You can set it to anywhere from 10 to 60 minutes. Personally, I find that this works really well with my terrible habit of setting multiple alarms because I sleep through the first few. It’s easy to lose track of how much time has passed between multiple snoozes, but the light makes the inevitable arrival of a new day impossible to ignore.
…Or sync your lighting with sunrise and sunset
While I prefer to turn on my lights at a specific time in the morning — and that makes sense for those who have to stick to a schedule — nighttime is a different story. Like many smart lights, the Hue app has automations that let you tie your lights to your local sunset. This is based on the location of your Hue bridge, which you can configure in the app’s settings.
To set this up, go to the Automation tab in the Hue app and select Custom Automation. Instead of choosing a specific time, you can choose either Sunrise or Sunset. To avoid a jarring transition, I like to set the timer to start 15 minutes before sunset and set the Fade duration to 30 minutes, so some of my lights turn on around sunset.
I also like to set up a second automation that comes on an hour or two after sunset to dim the lights again. Especially in the summer where I live, sunset comes pretty late, so it can be easy to lose track of time. Having a visual reminder like this helps me keep track of time.
Create a special atmosphere on a date with candles
Animated effects are a bit buried in the Philips Hue app, which is a shame because they’re one of the platform’s best features. These effects allow your lights — especially if you have full-color RGB bulbs — to mimic the flickering of a candle, the shimmering surface of water, or abstract colored prisms.
Candle animations are especially perfect for dates. Nothing sets the mood like a dim, soft dance of flames – without the setup and risks of a real fire. To find these effects, open the light you want to apply it to. You can click on each light and select the effects icon with three stars to find the effects library.
For rooms with multiple light sources, it’s often easier to create a custom scene to apply to all lights in the room. This requires a little more setup, but create a new scene for a room and choose an effect for each light in that room. Once you’ve set up a scene, you can easily activate it from the app or in one of the more convenient ways. Including…
Use widgets on your home screen to quickly change your environment
Widgets— Android home screen widgets in particular—have had a checkered history, oscillating between mostly useless decorations and slightly useful little gizmos. But Philips Hue’s controls are one of the few widgets I actually use every day and wouldn’t want to live without. I have a page on my phone’s home screen with light switches and a few common scenes that I can easily swipe to get to.
If you have the Hue app on your phone, you can add these widgets to your home screen on both Android andiOS . Long press an empty space on your home screen and search for the Hue widget. The app will take control and walk you through choosing the room, scene, and switch you want to apply each widget to. You’ll have to create a widget for each scene, but in a few minutes you’ll have a nice little dashboard at your fingertips.
Don’t forget voice control
There’s a good chance that half the reason you bought smart lights in the first place was to control them with a smart speaker . Once you turn off the lights in your bedroom while snuggling under the covers, you’ll never want to go back. What you might not know is that even if you don’t have a smart speaker, you can use this trick.
Most smart speakers like Google Home, Amazon Echo, and even Apple HomePod can control Philips Hue lights with simple voice commands. However, you can set up voice assistants like Siri or Gemini to control your lights directly. The process will vary depending on which device you’re connecting with, so check your phones and speakers to see how to connect them to your lights.
Turn on vacation mode when you’re away to make it feel like you’re home
One of the most useful specialized automations in the Philips Hue app is the Mimic Presence tool. In the Automations tab, you can find this feature, which automatically turns your lights on or off on an irregular schedule, even when you’re not home. This can make it seem like you (or someone else) is home to nearby observers.
This is a common tactic to deter potential burglars, and it can be surprisingly effective. Most home burglaries are crimes of opportunity , and even simple deterrents can make your home a less attractive target. Whenever I plan to leave the house for a while, I set this automation. Then I usually forget about it until the first time my lights accidentally turn off after I get home.