Philips Hue App Gets Design Overhaul

Signify today announced the launch of a redesigned version of the Philips Hue app for controlling Hue lighting setups. The fourth iteration of the Hue app was rebuilt from scratch to improve functionality and to enhance communication with Hue bulbs, lamps, and accessories.

hue app main screen
A reimagined Home tab offers access to each room in the home so you can get to your Hue lights by room with a tap. Drilling down into a room shows available your lights and scenes all in one easy access tiled view. Prior to now, setting scenes required switching tabs, so this is a more streamlined way of controlling lights in a room together or individually.

hue app room settings 3
The Home tab also houses the Hue Scene Gallery, a feature that existed before but should now be easier to get to. For those that have multiple bridges, there's now a toggle to swap between them to access different lights in the home.

hue app color picker 4
Routines have been eliminated in favor of Automations, accessible through the Automations tab. Automations support more advanced actions than before, including multi-user geofencing. With this feature, if a Coming Home or Leaving Home automation is used, the Hue app will check to see if anyone else is home before running the automation, so the lights don't get turned off when someone is still in the house.

hue app automations
Automations that run at sunrise or sunset have been improved with options to end a scene after a set time or to activate a scene at a time before or after sunrise/sunset rather than right at sunrise/sunset.

Signify says that more than a hundred other small and large improvements have been added to streamline the design of the Hue app. The design of the Home tab, for example, makes it easier to configure your setup from multiple places, and if you have an Entertainment Area set up it's easier to customize with a revamped isometric 2.5D view. There continue to be widgets and shortcuts available, as well as Hue Labs features to play with.

Later this year, Signify will further enhance the Hue app with dynamic scenes, which will let the lights in a set Room or Zone transition through different colors of a scene, allowing for all new lighting effects.

The Hue app is available from the iOS App Store for free, and Hue lights can be purchased from the Hue website. Updating to the new app will require migrating settings and scenes, a process that should be hassle-free.

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Top Rated Comments

Mr X Avatar
54 months ago
That's great but they keep releasing more and more lights/products yet don't increase hub capacity (I don't think they ever have) which is still recommended at 50! That means running more than one hub, which is a pain switching and only one can remote connect to unless you use a work around like Homekit/Google. Come on Philips/Signify - get with the times if you want people to keep buying more and more kit
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
CarpalMac Avatar
54 months ago

That's great but they keep releasing more and more lights/products yet don't increase hub capacity (I don't think they ever have) which is still recommended at 50! That means running more than one hub, which is a pain switching and only one can remote connect to unless you use a work around like Homekit/Google. Come on Philips/Signify - get with the times if you want people to keep buying more and more kit
This. I am running three hubs now (using one for those purely running off timers/sensors so keeping separate, I could get away with two) and it is a total PITA. They need to either sort the hub situation or the software to handle multiple hubs without having to keep manually switching between them. Due to Alexa only supporting one hub now I have to use Alexa for downstairs and Google for upstairs voice control.

I'd also like to see the long term Lab items (like senor pairs) promoted properly into the main app. Clearly enough people are using them.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
PumaUK7 Avatar
54 months ago
Omg, why on earth have they made the light selection go side to side off the screen?! Absolutely awful. Absolute pain to quickly adjust multiple lights within a single room now without doing so as a scene, and even that means scrolling from side to side to find the right one now.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
zachz Avatar
54 months ago
About time. The app for me has been terrible to use for years. Excited to try the new design
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Khedron Avatar
54 months ago
"Modern" trash design. Why do I need to horizontally scroll scenes and lights when 1/3 of the screen is empty?

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Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
CarpalMac Avatar
54 months ago

They have made it worse…they have removed widgets and made it go through shortcuts
You can have a shortcut to turn one light on…it’s all or nothing
It's not come through on my iPhone but has on my S10. First impression is that it is awful, I now have to turn on each light individually in a room to then access the slider to control its brightness. If I select an individual light that is already on it takes me to the colour adjust menu where another tocuh is required just to trigger the brightness controller. I then have to exit out of that screen to select the next bulb, rinse, repeat.

Also I can no longer switch quickly between hubs, it forces me each time to log in via out-of-home control, before I can access a local hub.

Far, far, farrr too many clicks/touches required. What a step backwards. Does anybody at Philips ever do any usability testing on their software?

Edit: Just to add, the software updates the Hub, it appears you cannot roll back to a previous version of the app once you have updated. :-(
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)