Philips Launches New 'Hue' App With Revamped Look and Support for Rooms

[MacRumors]

Philips today launched a new Hue app for its range of Hue HomeKit-connected smart lights and lightbulbs, introducing a fresh, intuitive layout that makes it easier to organize and control multiple lights at one time. While the app does not support third-party HomeKit accessories, it does incorporate HomeKit-style features like organization into rooms and more expansive scheduling tools.

The Hue Gen 2 app now features a main overview screen that separates lights based on what room they're in, making it easier to set scenes by room, adjust the color or brightness of the lights in a room, or turn off all lights in a room at once. Before today, organizing HomeKit-enabled Hue lights into rooms had to be done through a third-party HomeKit app, but now it is available to all Hue users and directly within the Hue app.

Tapping on a room offers up individual controls for each light, along with options for managing scenes. Individual light colors can be changed by tapping on the color avatar for each light and selecting a color, a white light, or a Light Recipe. Scene creation is done in the same way it was with the previous app, through photographs or specific light settings.

Also included in the app is a dedicated "Routines" section that makes it easier to set specific lighting scenes for waking up, leaving home, arriving at home, and more. A Notification Center widget, Siri voice control, and accessory support are all available and can be accessed through the Settings section of the app, which is also where Rooms and Lights can be organized.

Up to 10 presets that combine multiple rooms and scenes at once can be added to the Notification Center widget for quick access, and Siri voice control with the HomeKit-enabled bridge is unchanged.

"Philips Hue was the world's first connected lighting system for the home a little over three years ago, and since then it has become the system of choice for consumers," says Sridhar Kumaraswamy, Business Leader Connected Home Systems at Philips Lighting. "As the Philips Hue ecosystem has grown with products, apps and partnerships with leading smart home platforms, so have our consumers. They want to do so much more with our connected lights, and with the new Philips Hue gen 2 app they can. It was designed for them, tested by them, taking their feedback onboard, and today's new app gives them more control and creative freedom than ever before."

Overall, Philips' new Hue app is a lot more intuitive when it comes to managing a large number of Hue lights, especially those organized into several different rooms. Changing colors, dimming, turning lights on and off, and setting routines are all features that are easier to access in the revamped app.

Philips plans to keep both the original Hue app and the new Hue app available in the App Store, so users will be able to use the app they like best.

The new Hue app can be downloaded from the App Store for free starting today. [Direct Link]

Article Link: Philips Launches New 'Hue' App With Revamped Look and Support for Rooms

 

[jclo]

I'm not entirely sure when the new Hue app is going to show up in the App Store, but it should be soon. When it propagates, it'll be available here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/philips-hue-gen-2/id1055281310?ls=1&mt=8

 

[TheLuckiest]

I had the privilege to beta test this over the past few months and MAN is it a vast improvement over the current app. Really pleased with how it turned out.

The switch from thinking about rooms as "scenes" and actually as "rooms" is a very welcome change and really shows how cool smart lighting becomes once you've decked up all your major rooms with Hue.

 

[jclo]

I had the privilege to beta test this over the past few months and MAN is it a vast improvement over the current app. Really pleased with how it turned out.

The switch from thinking about rooms as "scenes" and actually as "rooms" is a very welcome change and really shows how cool smart lighting becomes once you've decked up all your major rooms with Hue.

Completely agree. The new app makes the Hue management experience a whole lot better, especially if you have Hue bulbs or lights in multiple rooms. It's a much better organizational system. I still think the tools for controlling the colors of individual lights could be better -- there's more focus on scenes and timers in this version.

Scenes have been tweaked so you can't drag the lights by numbers to the colors you want in a photograph, which is a feature I miss. It uses a shuffle tool to swap colors around. It's decent, but I haven't quite gotten used to it.

Also seems to be no way to change the colors of multiple lights at once without using a scene (before you could drag multiple light markers around on a color field).

 

[simonmet]

Meanwhile, Apple still sells the older (1st gen) non-HomeKit version of the iHue starter packs in Australia...WHY!!!

 

[MillieWales]

I had the privilege to beta test this over the past few months and MAN is it a vast improvement over the current app. Really pleased with how it turned out.

The switch from thinking about rooms as "scenes" and actually as "rooms" is a very welcome change and really shows how cool smart lighting becomes once you've decked up all your major rooms with Hue.

Can I assume you haven't 'decked up all your major rooms with Hue' then? If so you wouldn't be quite so excited by this update, to set your whole house to an evening mode or a daytime mode would take so many clicks it would probably be easier to run round and turn all the lights on and off in each room.

This is better than the first gen app in some respects, but Philips need to totally rethink Scenes and approach them in a similar way to many third party apps allowing you to set your entire house with one click, or ideally via a tap of an icon in the widgets.

If you have a few bulbs or lamps in one or two rooms then this could work well for you, but anything more than that there are apps much more suited to controlling your homes lighting, and some of them are free without in app purchases too. I do like iConnectHue but it isn't free, there is an initial fee and then an in app purchase for a few thing,s it is the only app that can control multiple bridges though, either in the same home and treat them as the same network or across multiple homes / settings. It's hardly expensive considering the cost of one bulb though, I'm always amazed people will pay hundreds for some bulbs and complain about a small charge for an amazing app.

I really like the Huemote app, it's free and should be how he official Hue app works, it's so simple but so effective and makes it really easy to control your house full of lights. It's my app of choice - try it out

 

[groovyf]

Still waiting for it to appear in UK App Store... Looking forward to trying this updated app out.

 

[mw360]

I love my Hues, but the use of all that blue and green in the app screenshots is really disingenuous. Hue bulbs can't do those colours at all. (Maybe the lightstrips can?)

iConnectHue is smart enough to show the bulb's colour gamut on its selection wheel. Doesn't stop me from messing around hoping to finally find where the blue is.

 

[Jeaz]

Seems to be US only at the moment? At least not available in Europe yet.

 

[orbital~debris]

I love my Hues, but the use of all that blue and green in the app screenshots is really disingenuous. Hue bulbs can't do those colours at all. (Maybe the lightstrips can?)

iConnectHue is smart enough to show the bulb's colour gamut on its selection wheel. Doesn't stop me from messing around hoping to finally find where the blue is.

Out of interest - I don't yet have any Hue products - why can't they do blue or green very well?

I own a Philips 'LivingColors Aura Colour Changing Mood Light' which has an integrated LED bulb, and it can achieve wonderfully vibrant green and blue (and turquoise).
I'd presumed I could get the same colours when I upgraded to Hue…

 

[swingerofbirch]

Seems to be US only at the moment? At least not available in Europe yet.

Not available in US yet, either (as of 5 AM Eastern).

 

[mw360]

Out of interest - I don't yet have any Hue products - why can't they do blue or green very well?

I own a Philips 'LivingColors Aura Colour Changing Mood Light' which has an integrated LED bulb, and it can achieve wonderfully vibrant green and blue (and turquoise).
I'd presumed I could get the same colours when I upgraded to Hue…

The bulbs aren't RGB, they are red/orange, lime green, and blue/violet. These produce great simulations of daylight and incandescent bulbs, and vivid warm colours, but the downside is that there's not enough saturation in the green and too much violet in the blue to sufficiently represent anything between pure yellow and pure blue on the hue wheel. You can get nice yellow and gentle greens, but anything around turquoise just looks like cold white. The blue/violet looks amazing mixed with some orange/red tones, deeper than anything an RGB screen can show, but you can't do anything like the green/blue underwater scenes showing in the pictures.

 

[IvanX]

These should be part of "Netflix and chill" starter pack

 

[erio]

Finally, it's available. Woohoo!!!

 

[Gorms]

Thank god they've finally switched from the hamburger menu to the tab bar style navigation.

That alone will save many, many, pointless taps and speed up me getting to where I want to be in the app

 

[Crazy Badger]

Still not in the UK, so downloaded from the US store. Other than rooms, not sure its that much better. I was hoping it would add some of the functionality of other 3rd party apps, or at least integrate some of their own Ambilight functionality. It hasn't even synced my scenes from the myhue website.

So far I'd rate it meeeehhhh

 

[jsn7]

There is a 4 room limit for the widget, is this just for the old bridge or is this for the new one also.

There is no way to turn everything off from the widget, you would have to add 1 button for every 4 rooms.

 

[toph2toast]

I think this was eluded to but not specifically stated - but you need the second gen Hue Bridge to take advantage of this app, correct?

 

[MillieWales]

There is a 4 room limit for the widget, is this just for the old bridge or is this for the new one also.

There is no way to turn everything off from the widget, you would have to add 1 button for every 4 rooms.

If you haven't tried it take a look at Huemote. It's not my app or anything to do with me, it's free, very few features but if like me you just want to turn lights on or off or select a scene from the widget then it's perfect.

You can have 5 rooms and 10 scenes in he widget I believe. Give it a try.

 

[ayale99]

Still needs a way to recognize multiple user accounts. The current setup assumes everyone is single with no family.

- IF I leave home THEN turn off all lights.
- IF I leave home but another family member is at home, THEN do not turn off all lights.

 

[jsn7]

I think this was eluded to but not specifically stated - but you need the second gen Hue Bridge to take advantage of this app, correct?

I'm using this app on the first gen bridge and i can say it works, but looks like the functionality is limited.

Could somebody with the new bridge confirm if you can add more than 4 rooms to a scene/widget?

 

[toph2toast]

I'm using this app on the first gen bridge and i can say it works, but looks like the functionality is limited.

Could somebody with the new bridge confirm if you can add more than 4 rooms to a scene/widget?

Great, thanks

 

[wbmatthews]

Liking the look of things so far, but the only drag for me is that gen 2 doesn't have Apple Watch support--at least not yet. It's super handy to have control from my watch when the phone isn't handy.

 

[MillieWales]

I'm using this app on the first gen bridge and i can say it works, but looks like the functionality is limited.

Could somebody with the new bridge confirm if you can add more than 4 rooms to a scene/widget?

Not sure what you mean, 'scenes' are per room - which is something I think they get wrong. Other apps let you add as many lights from as many rooms as you like to individual scenes, which is more useful for real world use.
[doublepost=1461851572][/doublepost]

Liking the look of things so far, but the only drag for me is that gen 2 doesn't have Apple Watch support--at least not yet. It's super handy to have control from my watch when the phone isn't handy.

Plenty of free apps do. I was interested to see Philps including a section in he app recommending third party apps, I think it's obvious Philips have no intention of producing the perfect app that does everything.

 

[nunes013]

I had the privilege to beta test this over the past few months and MAN is it a vast improvement over the current app. Really pleased with how it turned out.

The switch from thinking about rooms as "scenes" and actually as "rooms" is a very welcome change and really shows how cool smart lighting becomes once you've decked up all your major rooms with Hue.

It was a lot of fun to test! I enjoyed testing as well.