Name: Philips Hue
Rating: 4.60405 (69970 reviews)

User Reviews for Philips Hue

4.6 out of 5

70K Ratings

3 years ago, sophjame

Much Happier User Experience

Overall I’m much happier with the ease of use and scene selections available in the upgraded Hue app. I’ve been a long time user of Hue products and have always thought their app was kinda crap compared to the others available and their associated scenes. Thanks Phillips Hue Team for your dedication and effort in making sure you offer a user experience that’s uncomfortable to any other product/ service on the market. I also appreciate seeing the outdoor line expand as my lights are definitely my favorite feature in my home and I’m unsure of hat I would do without it in my life. Definitely increases my quality of life by a drastic amount. I’ve been passionate about lighting for years now as this is the second home to have Color Hue bulbs throughout and after working for a new home builder I was able to really pitch your product to quite a few homeowners that are now hopefully lifetime customers as well. I’m in the Seattle area but if their were ever a career opportunity within your organization that involves Sales and Marketing, I’d love to work with your incredible team. Thanks so much! James Schneider - Seattle

1 year ago, Seth Seger

Great overall; has a few issues

The Hue system is the best I’ve seen for home smart lighting, hands-down! The app is beautiful, and the out-of-the-box scenes are gorgeous, and work pretty seamlessly; the more Hue lights you have, the better it looks, and it scales automagically when I add new lights. The automations are the only disappointment I have with it at all; they’re super basic, and haven’t improved much over the last ~3 years or so since I’ve had Hue lights. A recent update actually seems to have removed some of the previously-available functionality of the automations, and/or made the UI for that part of the app very unintuitive (I’m not sure which yet — still trying to figure it out since the changes). It’s way more difficult (impossible?) to get really granular scene fades/changes than it should be, IMO. To be fair, it looks to me like they’ve been focusing on making automations “just work” out of the box, rather than making users create a bunch of complex automations manually, but for those of us who have really specific ideas about how we want our automations to work, the automations are still woefully lacking, even after all these years of time they’ve had to build those features out. There are other apps that pick up some of the slack, but they’re very unpolished and in some ways worse. So, all that is to say — yay for this app for being the best overall app available for Hue lighting, but why are the automations still so basic, after all this time!?!?

2 weeks ago, The Sidewinder Three-Thousand

App getting better; needs bulb replacement wizard

I have had Philips Hue lightbulbs since they first came out, and the app keeps getting better. But it is missing one critical function that costs users a ton of time and effort if they wanna upgrade their bulbs: you can’t seamlessly add a new bulb and have it “replace” an old bulb and all of its scenes and settings. If you have dining room chandelier with an 80 W bulb that is integrated in 10 different scenes, two switches, and 4 automations you have programmed, and you want to upgrade it to 150 W bulb, you will have to manually delete the old lightbulb from every scene (or or you will get a warning that the scene failed every time you implement it) you will need to manually add the new lightbulb to every one of those scenes, switches, & automations, and reprogram the correct color, temperature, and brightness of each bulb as well. It is a big pain in the backside. And, ironically, it discourages people from wanting to upgrade their lightbulbs, which you would think Phillips wouldn’t want. So please, Philips, if anyone on your team reads these reviews, please add some sort of wizard to the Hue app that allows the user to buy a new Hue bulb and be able to have it replace an old one in a seamless way, so that it inherit the old bulbs name and all of the different scenes and switches it was involved in. Make it easier for people to upgrade their bulbs and buy more of your products.

1 year ago, matthew4066

This app used to work

I have been using the hue lights for a couple of years and they worked great! Now they don’t and I have had it. One of the biggest selling points for this product is that they are tightly integrated with HomeKit and should work seamlessly. I spent money on bulbs and a bridge and they worked great for little while. Now I can’t use HomeKit with these anymore and it’s such a hassle to work with them anymore because I have to open a app that takes a full minute to load and connect if I can quickly access it and toggle the switch. I am frustrated as much as I can because I have had this issue for over a year and this is a known issue that Philips is refusing to pay attention to. I don’t trust that if I get a new one that the same issue isn’t going present itself since the issue is clearly a software bug that Philips is biding their time on. I am trying to make as much noise as possible because I like the product and integration but if it’s broken and can be fixed (and believe me I have tried everything I possibly can multiple times to fix it) because the app still sees it and the lights still respond to the app, then it should be a bug that is easily squished. I would recommend going to something else that doesn’t require you to spend 3x as much on their ecosystem of products when the lights and their basic switches work just as well. I got them for the convenience and they are no longer convenient or easier to use. Please fix this!!!!

5 years ago, XXiiSARGEiiXX

Pretty good start

Just started using the Philips Hue products about a week ago. Overall I am impressed with their products. This app is decent, seems intuitive to use. There are 2 things I would really like to see from this app. 1. Be able to sort rooms. This would be very helpful. I would like my rooms to be listed in Alpha order without having to go in and redo all of them. 2. Be able to add sub-rooms (maybe a different name) to rooms. If I have light bulbs, the play bar, lamps, etc in the same room, I would like an easy to to control them with in that room without having to create separate rooms for each set of lights/devices I want to control in a room. Update #1: I figured out how to sort rooms, that is great, wasn’t very obvious to start, glad it is available. Since using the Philips Hue system for a couple weeks I realize some other things I would like to see. It would so nice to have a pool of available scenes, since there is a limit to the number of scenes and devices that can be on a hub. This really should not be that difficult to implement. Also another easy implementation would be to have a checkbox on your sensors, something along the lines on the Do not disturb that is in the labs. Except it really doesn’t need to be all that complex, simply if you have a scene on do not change it. Those are two very easy fixes that I would love to see.

1 year ago, APSturm

Great system BUT has some has ridiculous faults

I absolutely love the huge system. The only thing I do not like about it is how many times I go to buy lightbulbs and it comes with a bridge. I do not need a bridge. Every time I go to buy lightbulbs. This bulbs are expensive enough and I should not have to buy another bridge every time I get more bulbs and expand. There are also some problems that Philips seems to refuse to address like if you turn a routine off then back on a day or two later it may not actually turn on the first time making it unreliable. I have contacted Philips HUE about all of my issues even those not listed in this review and expressed how much I love the system still, their response was to make me part of their beta program to help them evaluate new and current products & I was also told I would get a small discount on items I purchase but I do not get the discount I was told so costco, BJs and Sam’s club are where I have found the best deals. I also feel like they wasted a lot of my time telling me they were going to send me all sorts of products to test around late 2019 but as of February 2023 I still have not gotten any and when I contact Philips they have no idea what I am talking about so they wasted 4+ hours of my time getting me set up for their beta/new product test program for nothing! To make matters worse the problems with the routines still is not fixed!

3 years ago, Uncle Pennybags $$

Pretty UI, $#|+ UX

I (like many people) have heavily invested in the hue brand. My favorite part of the technology was the old app, which had all the functionality and usability I was looking for in an app to control the lights in my home. And that’s saying something, as I develop software for a living and work daily with app developers, so I’m a critic of UX design. The new app is total garbage. It’s semi-aesthetically pleasing and takes nice screenshots for the App Store. That’s the end of it’s nice features. It goes downhill from there. Vertical + side scrolling is idiocy and only useful in a demo by the product owner to stakeholders. Again, stop making app usability decisions based on what takes nice screenshots. Dimming individual lights is now impossible. You can’t even be consistent on where the x button is on the screen. Or whether it’s and x or a back arrow. And different types of lights in a room causes a different screen to show up with equally horrendous but different UX. All I want to do is see my lights in a list and dim them in the same screen. And for the love of Pete, the side scrolling scenes DO NOT need to be the first thing on the screen. How many times do I need to say it, stop designing for screenshots. Have you used your own app in the real world? I use this app 50 times a frickin day. What if someone moved all of the light switches in your house and now you have to go hunting for them all over the place? This app is worse than that. Try again.

6 years ago, Djgrolyos

Still No Sensor Options

I wanted so long for V3 to come out. Total disappointment. Basically it is prettier and easier to use. As far as more features, not much. The one I really wanted was Sensor customizations. You cannot pick which lights in a room to have turn on or off. I have multiple Hue lights in my bathroom. I have a Sensor in it. I want my Sensor to detect motion and then if it is night time, turn on only the cabinet lighting very dim. This is just so when you go to the bathroom at night you don’t have blaring lights or have to get your phone out to turn them on. In the Hue App, the only option is to have ALL the bathroom lights come on. You cannot pick just one or two lights. You can do this in HomeKit, but then some of the customizations for the Sensor Hue allows won’t work. (I.e. how strong the motion had to be to work, how long to keep it on, etc....) Hue Hyped this new version for months if not a year. Now it is here and like I said... it basically is the same app just better designed. Very disappointing. Will not be buying more sensors until they fix this. One last thing... same thing is true with Hue Tap and Hue Dimmers. Both only let you pick rooms, not individual lights. Dimmer only has 4 customization areas when there are 5 in HomeKit. It’s like Hue forgot all about their accessories. C’mon... I wasted $250 on 5 Sensors, $100 on 2 taps, and $200 on 5 Dimmers and all of them you can’t do what you claimed you could when I got them.

6 years ago, VirtualMirage

Finally! Power On Behavior Settings!

I’ve been using Hue in my home for almost two years now. My biggest issue with the system is how the lights would all turn on bright white after a power outage or if lights connected to a light switch would reset to the default white if someone turned it off from the wall switch. Now with this update, my largest gripe has been resolved! I will say that the firmware update required for this feature took longer on some bulbs than others. Most of my bulbs received the update within 30 minutes or so. But I had a handful that took over day, almost two days! They did eventually update and now all bulbs are on the latest firmware. The next thing I am waiting for is the ability to use Hue Entertainment with my AppleTV so that I can sync my lights to what’s on the screen. Hopefully, that comes sooner than later. Other areas of improvement would be to the routines. It would be nice if I could set a routine to turn on at sunset but turn off at a fixed time of day without having to create two separate routines (one for on and the other for off). At the moment, the only other option that it gives you within a single routine is to have the lights turn off at sunrise if they are set to turn on at sunset.

6 years ago, PinkWhimsy

Shortcut for alarms, please!

I’ll start off by saying that I’ve barely touched the Hue app in several years, since I’ve been able to control everything I need with HomeKit. However, I’d recalled that Hue has this nifty way to wake you up where it slowly adjusts lighting over time, instead of a jarring sound or something, and I wanted to try using this. The only way to do this is through the Hue app itself. I got even more excited when I learned that Hue started supporting Shortcuts, hoping that I’d be able to incorporate an action to set this type of alarm in the app in my shortcut for bedtime (I work varied shifts throughout the week, waking up as early as 5 and as late as 8am). There doesn’t appear to be a way to execute this shortcut without just telling Shortcuts to open the app, like I can do with the clock app. I’m not sure if this is a limitation of available actions developers are permitted to donate, or if this is just not something that had been considered, but I would love to see this! The only other downgrade is for how confusing it is to set up new lights and assign them to rooms. I’ve set up this stuff probably 50 times (moving several times as well as adding new accessories over the years) and I never remember that you name the light and then have to back all the way out and add it to a room. It seems kind of clunky.

2 years ago, FlyBaby79

Everything I Dreamed It Would Be

I am happy to put a $35 bulb in a $10 lamp if I don’t have to walk up to said lamp to turn it on or off. Since the concept of smart lighting creeped into my brain, I have been obsessed. I read somewhere that Hue was the best. Admittedly I didn’t read much further than that and kind of jumped the gun, but I have not been disappointed. The price can be daunting, but thanks to little credit pockets here and there and a couple great sales, we are up to 11 bulbs, spread out over four rooms. Again, the biggest plus for me is controlling lights without having to move. The colors, scenes, third party apps…icing on the cake. I love playing around with color recipes and mood lighting. It’s just fun. I recently used an automation feature to help my teenager wake up in the mornings. The lights gradually come on for 30 minutes, going from barely on to fully bright. We’ve used this twice, and both times, it worked. I feel like I’m just learning the basics. I’m sure there are a ton more fun and useful things these bulbs can do. I highly recommend!

3 years ago, cfanaic

Now impossible to replicate colors

With the new update, the recently used color palette has been removed, and it is now impossible to copy colors to new lights and new scenes. I don’t understand why this feature would be removed, but doing so has made the app almost entirely useless for setting up new lights, or moving lights to new rooms. Speaking of which, the biggest problem with this app from the very beginning has been the fact that you can’t easily copy scenes to new rooms. Why can’t we create scene templates with our own preferred colors, like the built in Hue scene gallery options (Bright, Dimmed, etc)? Even when we had access to a palette of recently used colors (before it was removed with the new update), it was still an incredibly tedious task to go through and recreate every scene for a new room. But now it’s no longer inconvenient, it’s literally impossible. Please bring back the recently used color palette, and then finally add the ability for users to save their own custom scene gallery. Also, why have we never been able to apply the same color to all lights in a scene?! Why do we have to go through every light individually? 99% of scenes are going to be the same color for all of the lights. The entire purpose of this app is to allow us to customize our lighting, and it has never made any attempt at streamlining that process.

1 year ago, amasri

RFE: Allow Bridge, light updates without Internet access

Overall, I’ve really enjoyed my Phillips Hue lights & light strip over the past few years. Setting up scenes is fun & useful. I have scenes for when I’m reading, scenes for movie watching, & scenes for nightlights when I’m going to sleep. I have a suggestion. If I want to use Hue lights on a network not connected to the Internet, & there’s been an app update, often the entire Hue system is inoperable until applying firmware updates to the bridge &/or lights. Please consider an option to download necessary firmware updates over cellular to the app, then connect to the WiFi network & apply the firmware updates directly from the phone. Right now I have to use a convoluted method to do this. I connect my MacBook Pro to my iPhone over USB. I share my iPhone’s Internet connection over USB to my MacBook Pro. I share the MacBook Pro’s Internet connection over Ethernet to my WiFi base station WAN port. This gives my iPhone Internet connectivity & access to the WiFi network simultaneously so I can install the update. I really shouldn’t have to do all that just to turn my lights on. There’s been lots of updates lately so this is very annoying.

7 months ago, ItsTheJu

Does not work with HomeKit

Update: I found (literally after writing this review) what the issue was. Somehow, a different or Old bridge was still linked into HomeKit. How it reappeared, I don’t know but it happened as soon as I updated to 17.2. Once I removed ALL Hue bridges from my HomeKit (which crashed my HomeKit app), it finally worked after re-linking. I’m sorry for the bad review, Phillips. I believe this is a bug on Apples end than it would be on yours. Updating the rating to reflect that. I hope this review helps someone who may be having issues and may have had an old hue bridge in the past. Phillips Hue integration with HomeKit is entirely broken with the iOS 17.2. I can no longer control my bulbs/bridge with my iPhone 15 Pro Max, HomePod minis, iPad Air, nothing. Everything is set up correctly and it even shows up in HomeKit, but it refuses to respond. HomeKit constantly says “this accessory is not responding”, despite it successfully connecting during the setup process when linking with HomeKit. I’m at a loss. The developers have had access to iOS 17.2 way before it was launched to thoroughly tested it. I have troubleshooted the issue and exhausted all options.

6 years ago, RMS

You updated five days ago and you still have not fixed the routines?

I went into the App Store and saw that you had an update five days ago and I was excited because that meant that I probably could now use my routines. Wrong! I cannot believe that you guys still haven’t fixed the routines section. In the other routines area, after trying to save something on the third chance, the app freezes. I am simply not able to set up anything in other routines. Come on guys! This is terrible really do like the update, but there are so many mquirky problems with the darn app! You fixed the widget problem very quickly, and I appreciate that. Now you have a problem with routines! I cannot for the life of me set up my routines using the “other routines“ area. In the past I’ve been able to have my lights go on at a certain time and go off at a certain time specifically, every day of the week, and it’s just not working. I press the button to save, and it goes right back to the same screen as if it has not been saved. I press save twice, and it doesn’t work. The third time I press it the system goes into an eternal spinning circle frozen app! And then I have to simply reboot the program! Like I said, I like the styling that you did and some of the features you added, but you have really screwed up a lot of small areas of the usefulness of hue

3 months ago, Smathleen

Love it

These lights are really functional, especially using the hue app, which has allowed me to schedule my day when I work from home. My morning starts with my hue lights gradually turning on like a sunrise and waking me up before my alarm, I then have a timer set to change from early morning getting ready lighting to my work from home setting, which turns my living room into an office, and then at 5:30 the lights at my desk gradually get darker making the focus the seating area for entertainment. I also have special designs and vocal commands for when I’m working out and I need my Living Room to be a gym. Or for when I’m watching a serious movie and i need The lights dim. I’ve also programed the GPS to turn on the lights to a mellow welcoming mood for when I am a certain distance approaching home in the evening from work or plans. I also have installed the portable light switches to make things a little more visitor friendly If I were to make any suggestions, it would be to make setting on the app for when someone visits and wants to be able to control the lights in my apartment beyond what my hue light switches offer.

9 months ago, Arenheim

Decision Fatigue

More often than not, I want a dimmer switch more than I want my desk lamp to turn purple. If I leave the room and turn off my lights after setting a custom brightness (e.g. turning down a desk lamp because it’s bright outside) I have no way to easily return to this custom, temporary state. I want to save power, but I also don’t want to spend a minute fidgeting with my lights to get that perfect brightness again. When I return to the room, I can choose a custom preset (good feature), or individually turn on lights. One misclick on the binary slider for a light opens a detailed menu for colors that I rarely use. This menu has many buttons, and is distracting when I just want a simple, large dimmer switch to push most of the time. Also, it is not possible to remove some preset scenes from the menu. I want a clean, simple experience for my light switch. I don’t need my lights to have a green and purple button that I can’t hide. Yes, it’s awesome your lights do that. I’ll use it on Halloween. No, I don’t want that button prominent in the menu the other 364 days of the year. The app has great potential, but is frustrating for one of my common use cases. I still love the lights, but I find the current app interface detrimental to the experience.

1 year ago, Codhutch

App filled with bugs

Put 75 hue lights in my home and after a month wish I’d gone with a different smart bulb. Nothing good to say about the app. It’s far inferior to LIFX and Govee in user friendliness and customization. On top of the fact you need 2 bridges for as many bulbs as one needs for a house which requires 2 different accounts to control. This means you can’t control the entire house with Alexa nor can you control the entire house without switching back and forth. The app itself has bugs galore the most annoying being with scenes. It constantly rearranges my scenes out of order as well as changing the brightness setting inside those scenes. Creating automations is a nightmare compared to LIFX or Govee. You can’t change brightness so instead have to create several scenes and multiple automations to accomplish the same thing both other apps can do at 1 time without creating any additional scenes. Custom scenes also are not available across all rooms so you have to constantly recreate or copy paste into each room over and over again. This becomes a big problem as there are also not any preset solid colors. So in order to make all rooms red with a touch of a button, you have to create a red scene for every room in the house.

2 weeks ago, Shygirl324

Lights Disconnected

I enjoyed having smart lighting. It was worth the cost until this app updated about a year ago. Since then my lights do not connect. I have no bridge, and I feel like that’s what I need. There’s no clear lay person way as to why it’s not working anymore. I’ve tried so many times that I’m now just stuck with the white light setting. Alexa can’t connect, Siri can’t connect, and my basic Bluetooth can’t connect. I shouldn’t have to make another $50 purchase to reconnect just because the app failed to do its job. I’ve tried troubleshooting in every possible way. There’s nothing working. Not to mention the additional settings for themes and changing lights required a subscription. These lights were over $100 and can only be controlled by an app that doesn’t work. I’ve done everything but clear out my Bluetooth cache and from what hear that doesn’t even work. The warranty on my lights is expired and I don’t know what to do. All that to say, anyone reading reviews before purchasing the actual lights, you should probably spend the extra money for the bridge and fancier lights because the basic lights did NOT bring the quality it costs. I got about 1 year use out of these and will not be repurchasing.

5 months ago, BB Lovah

Best lighting for a lifetime!

I have been using hue lights for since they came out it has to be at least 10/10 years ago! They are without a doubt the most reliable easiest and best lighting I’ve ever used! I’ve tried to use other bulbs it’s just not the same. The color is so vibrant and true to its claims to be so vibrant. Also they are the colors that are exactly how you wish for them to be. Please whatever they do over there at Phillips Hue don’t stop because I can’t live without them! I use the colored lights in my home. I have them in six different places for lighting for my home. I will say this there is never a laggy bit, they’re always easy to connect and stay connected and they can’t be beat in any category except for cost. HoweverI bought my last set about 10 years ago so they paid for them self Id say. Don’t hesitate by them they’re worth it last forever they look beautiful and make you feel even better. Lighting is everything and lighting can’t be done right in my opinion not without Philips Hue color lighting Only!

1 year ago, teaching kristin

Intuitive, stable and pretty darn fun

Super quick and easy to set up (haven’t needed to look anything up yet), and playing around with settings to suit the context/my whim is surprisingly entertaining. The latest update’s new effects and scene gallery categories are a great addition. One minor piece of constructive criticism is that I wish it were possible to toggle the “snap to other light’s current color” feature in the color picker. I see its utility, but would prefer to disable it personally. Something else I’d love to see in the future is the inclusion of a saturation slider in addition to the existing brightness slider. So many of the preset scenes are gorgeous but a little too intense for what I’m looking for day to day. Being able to quickly and easily desaturate each color in the scene in one fell swoop via slider would be awesome But! Bottom line: Very slick app. Incredibly stable. Super intuitive initial setup. Simple to set & forget if that’s your thing, but also fun and easy to tweak settings and explore options whenever you feel like it

1 month ago, MotoMorales

The Matter update broke HomeKit integration

This system worked great for months, but after my Bridge was updated to support Matter, it stopped working in HomeKit altogether. I’ve tried everything I possibly could, including deleting the Hue Bridge from the Home app,deleting and factory resetting the Bridge from the Hue app and rebuilding all of the rooms and light configurations, deleting the Home completely then re-building everything (scenes, automations, re-adding all accessories from all manufacturers), and multiple attempts to connect the Hue Bridge. And I know that this is a Philips Hue problem and not an Apple problem because all other manufacturers were able to be recognized and operational in the Apple Home app. With Hue though, the bridge gets added to Home, and all of the Hue lights immediately show up as “No Response,’ even though I can control all of the lights remotely on the Hue app. I’ve had Hue lights for over a decade, and Philips has continually driven the product line further and further into the ground. The products are severely overpriced and always have been, but I could justify the cost with their ease of use and capabilities. Now, it’s a system that I can’t possibly recommend or continue to invest significant time and resources into. It’s so disheartening.

2 years ago, Blizzard1s2d

Hue please put a stop to scam apps

This is the official Hue app. You do not even need it to run the Hue lights on HomeKit, you can delete it and use the Apple Home App after you get all set up. Please do not download other apps and definitely do not give them money. Hue please make Apple take the fake Hue apps off the App Store. They are buying ads to appear first and then demanding expensive weekly or monthly subscriptions. Reviews on that app say they will never buy Hue lights again. PS This app is fine. Set-up is not the worst but it’s a pain. I like the Hue lightbulbs and light strip colors, especially the compatibility with Apple’s daylight feature, but they could be brighter. They connect OK as long as you have the bridge. (They are now obsolete as they don’t have Thread radios nor are they Matter certified. Will wait for upgrades to buy more.) In my smart home they are second in reliability after Eve — at least once a week half the lights in my fixtures are different colors or don’t turn on — but they stay connected and never need resetting.

5 months ago, Carbonbreath

Wait for it, wait for it and BAM, still problematic!

I have been buying Hue lights for several years and never been completely satisfied. There bridge is horrible from the beginning and it drives me & my wife crazy. Hue’s customer service isn’t much better I don’t even bother calling anymore. I must say, I became one of those guys that wish Apple just manufactures everything in-house under Apples brand and kick most 3rd party’s to the curb. I already know I am to invested and firm into Apples eco-system to leave. I have factory reset my bridge so many times over the years trying to get it to connect with Homekit I given up after today. Far as app it’s outdated convolution [UI], having way to many steps. It takes my joy away experiencing Hue’s technology. My reason why I would prefer using Homekit if that worked. So much for that, huh? Problems begin after IOS 12 but we’re now headed towards 13.3 possibly IOS 14 in our near future. I’ll even add that Google Speakers & Alexa has its problems with Hue bridge. All I can consider is another brand and hope Hue Lights still work using another manufacturer or I’ll sale Hue Lights on eBay for cheap taking a loss. It’s frustrating that Hue blames Apple for Hue’s engineers lack of skills to keep up. In my Humble opinion Hue can’t keep up with Apple.

4 years ago, Bummer Toons

Extremely Slow, Unresponsive App

Philips keeps managing to repeatedly fix, and then break the Hue app. It has been stable and effective for well over a year (after a super painful stretch), but they’ve managed to once again render the app nearly useless. For the past several weeks, the app has been much slower to load, and now when you want to turn a light off, you quite literally have to touch the on/off button and wait 5-6 seconds before the light responds, if it responds at all (for reference, lights used to turn on/off in about a second). Worse, while you wait to see whether the app will actually communicate with the Hue hub, the app completely freezes. You can’t swipe up/down or touch anything and have the app respond, and after the lights do respond, you have to wait another 5-6 seconds before the app functions again. So if you want to turn off 3 lights, for example, it will take you 30-45 seconds. For as much money as I have tied up in my Hue lights, I’d like for Philips to test their app updates better before they release the update, and when they cause a major bug like this, I’d really like them to fix it much more quickly. In summary, the Hue lights are outstanding. The app is either brilliant, or unusable for months at a time. Right now, it’s broken again.

5 months ago, Pauly_!

Nice Try

New 3.0 version ....No instructions make it a challenge. I just can’t figure out how to hold my light color and brightness it wants to just do its own thing. If you go through and set each room with color and brightness then save it when the timer activates the light in the room it is not always the color you selected or brightness. It actually changes brightness levels to all the same also. I am in the original hue system and did clear all old info through the app. If you are on the first version I suggest you hold on just a bit longer as this one has promise but is not there yet. Hey developer, some beta trials with real consumers would probably uncover issues like this. Edit-reset entire system, set up entire system like new. All appears to move along well except I can not save a custom routine. I can create it but then the only choices are save and cancel to exit the set up screen. If I reboot my iPad it set up scene is gone, close the app it is gone, hit cancel and the routine is cancelled. If I attempt to add two on the same screen it will not save and freezes the APP. Final edit. Scenes work perfectly on my iPhone... do not work on iPad Pro .Otherwise we have a nice app here😀

2 months ago, schaerthelove

I never write reviews … never… but this is probably the single best thing I’ve done for my home

These lights are not only so simple to set up even my grandmother could do it, but they never fail to amaze me with their responsiveness. I’ve tried other Bluetooth bulbs and nothing compares. Probably because this system uses a bridge that connects directly into your router. But for real, the best! I’ve had a few of my bulbs for going on five years, used every single day, and they are still going strong. Insane! Not to mention their new and updated remote systems and motion detectors. Honestly I could go on and on with how amazing this is and how I am literally purchasing everything they come out with because how can you not ?! I mean really. Just …. The best company on the market. If you don’t have this… I mean… and the app!!! Insane. Super quick connectivity and super simply to navigate. Even a person who is technologically inept like myself can figure it out. Just brilliant design. Again. I can not say more good things… AMAZING

6 years ago, Tommy G-Code

Finally, a Hue App to write about!

I’ve been a sucker for Philips since the invention of the CD. I’ve had every Hue product and every version thereof, aside from the flood lights. While sadly at the cost of my paycheck, it’s been nice to watch Hue evolve over the years, that’s goes for the tie into 3rd party cloud APIs (Echo/Alexa has been a ride) as well, but the Philips App serious was lacking, frustrating to use and just became mundane. I actually got so sick of it I’d write my own software to control the lights (gg on the API Philips). So yeah, if you haven’t downloaded version 3 of this app, it’s pretty kick a**, finally you can move things around, before you had to delete everything and add them back in a specific order, trying to color match was a nightmare, and so many other issues the previous apps had, this resolves! So for now, it’s hats off to Philips, thank you and please keep making improvements on your hardware and software, you’ve certainly won me back with this one. Cheers, ~T

6 years ago, Cheroney31

Sooo Disappointing since Newer APP

First off... I absolutely love Philips Hue! But I remain totally SHOCKED that with all those super smart programmers and APP developers at Philips, since the newer 2.0 and now 3.0 version of the APP came out, one can no longer program a single light bulb into multiple rooms!!! Or group rooms into ZONES!!!!!! I am still using the 1st version of the APP with my 47 Philip Hue bulbs and many devices!!! And am frustrated beyond belief that they took the ability to create zones away ever since they updated the APP! How is this an improvement Philips!??? Once people get invested into the Philips Hue ecosystem and spend time programming and creating scenes that work for their house and family it’s soooo counter productive to do updates like this!! Sonos and many other companies do it right! Philips Hue... I’m still waiting for you guys to allow better management of the devices that people invest a lot of money in!! Also.. since I’m in the mood to give suggestions... :). How about show the updated/zoomed camera roll image as the icon when you enlarge and save a picture. Philips please call me... I’d love to share my thoughts on some of the problems with the new 3.0 APP. I still love Philips Hue... just wish I didn’t have to use a third party APP! :(

4 years ago, BroHanzo

Works well enough, but still missing features

I'll start by saying I've been using hue lights for 3 years, between 2 homes, and recommend them to anyone who will listen to me about smart lighting. I'm a HomeKit user primarily, which addresses many of the automation feature issues many users have reported with their control of sensors and lights. Now, the older version of the hue app used to let you change which lights are on which hubs which is no longer available. I also use 2 hubs in my house we got with 2 starter kits, and the combination has been nothing but a headache. I cannot set different hue hubs to control different lights and have them all display on one app dashboard. Additionally if I wanted to use one hub on the upper floors and another on the lower, the communication does not exist between the two hubs and makes it impossible to use more than one hub in the same household. HomeKit addresses this issue, but I would like to see it be addressed in the hue app itself. I will still recommend this if you're looking for home lighting solutions but I implore the developer to continue prioritizing customization features before rolling out more lights.

3 years ago, strawberryfawnx

User Experience Who?

i’ve always loved my hue bulbs and have never had any substantial problems with the app, until now of course. for some reason, someone on the development team decided to ruin the user experience and make the interface unbearable. the new way of scrolling through scenes, not being able to move scenes, the placement of the scenes above the option for the bulb settings, the uncomfortable way of adjusting brightness and hue once picking from the scenes or selecting your bulb, are just a few reasons i feel compelled to write this review. options are not intuitive and don’t seem to follow any sort of logical structure as to why elements are arranged in the way they are. before the redesign, the app was easy to use and every step was easy on the eyes to follow linearly on the screen. now, there’s odd mixes of vertical and horizontal sliding and scrolling that really is not necessary and makes things worse. it breaks the flow of the rest of the app too since the rest of the app besides Home appears to be unaffected. In conclusion, I can’t avoid the terrible UX when i’ve already invested in the hues ecosystem. please make the interface bearable and easy to use again. thank you.

3 years ago, belgianize

Poor migration for Bridge v1 and holder lights

It is the most frustrating and second worst application I had to « chance » to encounter ver the past 2 years. As an early adopter, I finally tried to migrate from bridge v1 to v2 and migrate the few strips and bulb remaining to the new hub. The application is just useless and full or bug. It doesn’t provide a seamless transition and it takes 5 plus hours without any success of migration. Hue support is just providing cookie cutter replies and don’t even spend the time to review the information provided. I moved from a system that had some vulnerability issues to some pieces of equipment which are simply not working. Whoever is in charge of the migration, backward compatibility and support are simply incompetent. Update and reply: The Twitter support is pretty incompetent despite the 4 hours and numerous message exchanges. The suggestion provided below make little to no sense and don’t address the big deficiencies of the app. Searching with the serial number did the trick at the end. But how difficult would it be for the app these 3 numbers, communicate to the new app and do the search?!? Just sharing 3 strings of characters and suggest the user to start a search?!? This is POOR development and UX. Incompetence all over.

3 years ago, Mybigballs101

Hue was fine till changed app.

What bothers me is. These systems run over WiFi. So when you update the app and this is not the first time this happen. Just so we are on the same page. I have 2 systems in two different homes. Many many miles away from each other. When you update the app. To make the system work. You need to be in the house to push button down to sync them. So you can make light go on and off. Well again. I’m not near the other system. So now the other system stop working from the app. Why. Because I need to push button down to sync it. I just wish they update the app without syncing the lights all the time. The lights and the 2 units are already synced to my phone. Now the other system is worthless after spending money for them. I get time off of work to get to the other house synced. Now It won’t sync. I even reset the system lost all my lights I save for time and colors and did not get it to work. So I disconnected it and put it in closet. I’m so done with these idiots that don’t understand what the units they sell. How they are used and work. It’s sad and I’m done with this company. There are other companies I can use and will use. Good luck to all of you.

3 years ago, frustrated_with_hue

Unbelievably frustrated with app update

I have never reviewed an app before, but this recent app overhaul has basically ruined my experience and clearly has for many others. We have 44 different Hue lights and accessories inside and outside our home which cost almost as much as my first car, and I absolutely loved them until this app change. The original app was intuitive, scenes and automations were easy to set, and I never had a single issue with connectivity or performance. Now, the app is horribly unintuitive, adjusting the color of a whole room or zone at a time is incredibly difficult, scenes do not work well, automations are buggy and often do not work at all, brightness cannot be set with scenes any more, and the app has a hard time connecting about 20% of the time. This app is so bad, I truly wish I could return all of the products I’ve purchased over the last year which total over $4k. I went from telling all my friends and guests about how great Hue products are to telling everyone not buy them. Please give us the option to go back to the last app!! It looks like many loyal customers will be leaving the Hue ecosystem based on the poor user experience.

3 months ago, HarrisonSD

Love the layout but needs more presets & customization

I am obsessed with my Hugh Phillips lights! So much so that I’ve bought nearly $1000 worth and I don’t regret a thing. The app design is slick and modern, with an easy to understand, intuitive layout. Some of the features, such as unstacking gradient, light strips with multiple color options within the color wheel, take some googling to initially uncover. But once you get the hang of it, it’s fun to design your own scenes. There are a few things that I wish Philip would improve upon. The grouping system, especially related to syncing music and other media by creating “entertainment zones“, can be somewhat frustrating and can leave you with several overlapping groups. Moreover– as a previous nano leaf user – I can say that Phillips lacks the lighting customization options that the former’s app permits. Some of the lights seem capable of additional color points yet gradients are always limited to three no matter the size or length. Finally, I wish Phillips would release more presets that you can install on your devices. Addition to the 30 or 40 that are always in the store, it seems they occasionally release seasonal presets. But there is no way to share or view additional presets either Phillips designs or customers. Overall, I would definitely recommend lighting your house with Phillips Hue. The app could just use a bit more fine-tuning to provide the functionality that competitors apps seem to allow.

3 years ago, MyEdPlace

One fatal flaw

I have used Hue products for many years. They were a pioneering group in the beginning. Hue products are solid and lasting. I like all those things, and I haven’t balked too much at their pricing. That said: There is one problem with the Hue App that we have endured from the start that I have asked Hue to fix and finally grown weary of - weary enough to start looking elsewhere for smart bulbs and such. The Hue app is the only one I have I have ever used that requires the user to verify their account and connect to the app by pressing a button on the hub - not just initially, but everytime the app is updated. That is a real problem when you are a person who must travel a great deal - and a person who depends on online ability to control devices at the remote location. I am left with two choices. Search through the apps set to update on my devices when I am away and make sure Hue is not among them or update (on purpose or by accident) and lose connectivity. Luckily some control remains via third party apps such as Alexa, but they require more intervention to use. There are other ways to accomplish verification. I can only assume Hue can’t figure that out.

1 year ago, ShortyLovees12020

Phillip Hue Color changing lights

When this came out we bought one to try it out then we really started to like them light bulbs we added some more around the house made a couple of the rooms smart as they connect to your smart phone through WiFi .. I love the different colors great for moods and music or just laying around the house watching movies .. I most definitely recommend this product for other people to try and enjoy Something new .. we have had some issues with the app not working right but we keep looking for updates they still need bug fixes within the app. Other than this it’s been great experience now there are other smart or light color changing bulbs out there by other companies trying to complete against one another but I would still choose this one . we love them makes life easier can turn on and off lights or dim them. Would like to thank Phillips Hue

2 years ago, Know Idea

Love Hue

At this point I’m probably a super user. I have 35+ indoor lights, about 25 outdoor lights, 10 remotes, 2 bridges (the first filled up) and 4 motion sensors. I may be missing something here or there as well. I love the indoor for relaxing, especially great bedtime with the kids. I love that I can turn on entire spaces with one push of a button on my remotes. They are also perfect for setting the holiday mood. The outdoor lights are also perfect for making the house look spooky at Halloween and festive for Christmas, Thanksgiving, Valentine’s Day, St. Pattys, etc etc etc. I have them on a timer so they come on at sunset and turn off at sunrise. Also have motion sensors to trigger other actions at night. I’ve had a few of the outdoor lights go but if you keep the receipt and they go before they’re 3 years old, Philips has been great at replacing them at zero cost to me. My next purchase will probably be the Xmas string lights. Looking forward to wrapping the tree

2 months ago, GoodNews1029

The Hue App works seamlessly all the time!

I couldn’t be happier with the app and the features in the app. When you are talking about the lighting in your home this is one app that you have to be able to depend on and in the five years that I have been using the app along with the Hue lights neither has let me down once. The app is 100% free which is a plus. It offers a wide variety of customization and is very easy to use. From adding new bulbs or light fixtures to your system or scheduling your interior and exterior lights come on and off, or setting them to custom light recipes, it works amazing. Whatever customization you do in the app will also appear in the Apple “Home” app for those of you who like using it to control your home’s automation. The engineers that designed and/or maintain this app are doing a great job. I highly recommend this app to anyone who is using Hue lights…you won’t be disappointed.

3 years ago, Hfnjgbfdhyffd

Failed migration to updated app, removed timer features.

The migration process did not complete properly. Several of my schedules were simply deleted. It seems that every time philips hue updates itself I lose some schedules or features. The last time they updated they removed fading time on timers. This time they removed timers completely. Since I use timers repeatedly to turn on or off rooms that I want to change randomly this new update renders the philips hue app useless for my needs. Why would they remove timers? IF IT AIN'T BROKE, DON'T FIX IT. After reading the most current reviews (after update 4) it's obvious that the programmers are not getting a bonus this time around. Removal of features such as timers, widgets and basic control and adjustment features. App crashes or locks up, unable to connect to bridges, unable to connect to lights, etc,etc,etc. You are alienating customers that invested $.$$$ in your products. We expect smart updates that provide added functionality and that actually work! Instead we are FORCED into garbage updates that don't migrate properly, remove relied on features, are counter intuitive and crash.

5 years ago, SparkytheSunDevil

Very lacking in options... disappointed

Dear Hue Engineers, The app does well at what is included but I’m really surprised at how few options there are in the app. The “zones” are nice but that’s about the best feature. For a $200 light kit the app is very, very lacking in options overall. Feels like a half finished app that was thrown together at the last minute, not a product that has been around for several ‘generations’ of lights. Love the wake up feature but you should be able to wake up to any color combo you want, not just white. No options to fade between colors. No options to automatically change colors at preset intervals. Other than turning the lights on/ off and choosing the colors you have to rely on 3rd party apps to do anything “fun” with these lights. Very disappointed in this app for how much the lights cost. Hue should be ashamed to have this app in the App Store, same goes for the Apple Watch app. From the watch you can only turn on/ off the lights to 4 very boring pre-set options, zero options to customize what color the watch app will turn on. A lot of the “lab” features should be standard within the app and customizable. The app and lights have so much potential... PLEASE UPDATE IT!!!!

2 years ago, AlwaysChilly

Straight forward app

Not sure what else I would need from the app, as it does everything I’d want it to. The only thing that I’d like more is for it to have more preprogrammed scenes….like, an infinite number to choose from. I realize I can create my own. But the scenes included seem quite limited and for no apparent reason at all. There need to be scenes regularly added, immediately and quickly, until there is such an extensive collection to choose from that it becomes almost impossible to choose one in a given moment. That’s not to say that the ones included aren’t great. They are, truly. And that this is my only complaint says everything about my feelings towards this app. Thanks Phillips, for a tremendous product and for the support in place for your product. I love my lights, and that’s something I’ve never would have said prior to purchasing Hue.

3 years ago, Bobdeli13

Update removed very important feature

The new update is joke. It removed one of the most important features which is the master color wheel. Before, there was a “master” color wheel for all the scenes combined, and a master color wheel for each individual scene. For example, i used to be able to control ALL the lights inside my house with one color wheel. If i wanted all the lights in my entire house to be “blue”, i would simply drag my finger on the master color wheel to blue and they would all change at the same exact time. Same goes for room scenes. If i had 5 lights in my “bedroom”, there was a master color wheel for the entire bedroom in which i could do the same as i mentioned above. It was very easy…. Now with the new update, they removed the master color wheel, and if i want to make all the lights blue, i have to individually set each light to blue. This makes zero sense as they have regressed the functionality of the app. I have reached out to Philips Hue support about this issue several times and they don’t seem to understand or care. The app developer needs to understand what is going on here and fix this. It is completely unacceptable.

5 years ago, CourtneyRenee95

Your Latest Update Made My Devices Unusable

My building doesn’t allow peer to peer connections, so if I place my actual WiFi won’t let my Hue lights communicate with my phone communicate. Yes, the WiFi situation is ridiculous, but I live in a historic building that only has one option for Internet and I already had Hue lights and bridge from the last place I lived. Regardless, even not being able to connect Hue to Internet was all fine, because Hue didn’t require Internet connection before, so I set up LAN and it worked fine with Hue Tap for controlling my devices. But as of recently, there’s an update for Hue bridges and it says I can’t use the Tap again until I do the update, which I can’t do because my bridge can’t be connected to the Internet in my building, just the LAN that I set up which has no Internet connection. It wasn’t broken, but your update broke it. Did you really have to disable all the features when I was able to use just fine without the update? I’ve spent so much money on Hue products to make this work. Seriously disappointed. Please make it possible to download update onto phone and then get back on my LAN with the bridge to install the update.

1 year ago, AmplifiedLife

Scene navigation still horizontal (left to right)

Updated: the natural light option has seemingly been removed. Back down to 1 ⭐️ for inconsistency. Updated: Natural light addition is appreciated. Matter support also. Extra star for that. But I rarely use the app to activate scenes because that’s screen scrolls horizontally and the app doesn’t rotate on iPhone. I use Apple’s home app so I can see more information and use the product more intuitively (vertically). Updated: the iPhone gets taller, but Philips makes navigating their scenes horizontal (left to right). So the bottom third of the screen is unused, and empty of information, and I can only see the status of 4 bulbs at once. Unless I scroll out of sight. Literally out of sight. 1 star. At least the apple home app is stacked vertically. It’s so obvious… Old: When i swipe left on my home screen, the UI/UX under my fingers moves in the same direction: left. In this app, when i scroll left, the UX/UI under my fingers moves in the opposite direction: right. Hence, inverted. Thankfully I didn’t update the app on my phone and can still use the better, older version. How does this happen?

9 months ago, DN2016

The corporate bait-and-switch strikes again

I invested years ago in a Hue hub and several Hue lights, and I’ve added to that since. I now have more than a dozen Hue devices in my home. Part of the appeal was that everything could be managed and used locally on my Wi-Fi network. I didn’t need an account or a cloud service or anything. Well, with a recent update my Hue app has started telling me that soon I’ll need a Hue account and to be signed in, to use the devices I’ve already paid for! This is under the fiction of improving security, which is a blatant lie. I’m being told I will soon have to compromise my privacy and security by relying on some distant login service to manage devices inside my home. What happens when my internet goes down (this happens a lot, thanks Spectrum)? Will my Hue hub decide not to let me control my lights anymore, even though I can control them on local Wi-Fi today? DO NOT BUY PHILIPS HUE PRODUCTS, THEY WILL BREAK EXISTING PRODUCTS TO FORCE YOU TO SIGN UP FOR FEATURES YOU DON’T NEED. I had to turn off Hue hub auto-updates and iPhone app auto-updates so I don’t get infected with this new device-breaking version.

2 years ago, TRawleigh

•••WORST UPDATE EVER••••

I have had my hue bridge and a ton of Standard A19 WHITE bulbs, a half dozen A19 COLORED bulbs, A handful of the colored CANDLE bulbs, 18’ feet of the colored LED strips and two colored BR30 flood lights for several years now.. Before this new app/update it has always worked very well. That was until this Super annoying new app and the ton of problems that came with it….. Let’s see first the app just disappeared on my Apple Watch 6… Then after trying to find the original hue app in the Apple Watch App Store i found it doesn’t even exist… I found a app called “hue bridge” it may be the same although it has a different thumbnail… Due to the fact it was my only option I installed the app.. But it doesn’t matter because the app won’t even open… I click the app & a stupid *loading… screen appears and that it.. Oh that just the beginning.. The HUE app on my phone was also super annoying.. Several times now Ive had re-verify my account reconnect my hue bridge and enable the out of home control option.. Basically I am very disappointed that I updated the app and wish I could return to the previous version!!

5 years ago, pigybank

Awful

This app is so bad. So awful compared to the original app I don’t know how anyone could possibly rate it 5 stars if they knew what the original app was like. Literally the only benefit of this app is Siri. Except when I add a scene to Siri it doesn’t show in HomeKit. And if I create the scene in HomeKit manually I can’t save it with the same name. Siri-ously!? Not to mention I had to restore my phone only to find the original app will longer sign in to My Hue, and since none of my scenes will transfer over I’m having to re-create everything manually. Also, why can’t I edit my old timers and routines in the new app? Insane. I’ll have to redo all those as well except I can no longer even see their original settings to go off of. Also, sometimes I want to add an icon for a scene without it overriding the light settings I’ve already set up. Lastly, there are often massive delays between when I tap a scene and the lights react. This does not happen with home kit or the original app. The app also constantly says “connecting” when these delays occur and sometimes connecting fails and nothing happens until I force close and reopen the app. Absolutely Dreadful!

6 years ago, Mjfcy

Mostly cool, some holes

I just got Hue, and for the most part, it’s super cool! The general system is amazing and really fun to play with. The app? A little funky. While some parts are fairly intuitive, I had to do a lot of poking around on my own to figure it out, which isn’t the worst thing, but I also had to do a fair amount of running back and forth from the basement to the first floor and back down because it seemed like the bulbs were syncing to the wrong room. Finally got all the bulbs assigned to the correct space, but my big frustration (and the main star-dropper) is that I cannot for the life of me log into my account through the app. I keep getting error messages—one of which said something about being connect to the wrong app (??), which I installed yesterday and controls everything just fine over WiFi. Here’s the kicker—the screen is displaying a “sign out” button, which leads me to believe I’m technically signed in. But I can’t do anything that requires sign in, because... I’m not... signed in? I’m very confused. Hue gods! Help me please!

3 years ago, ARC-TREK

Phillips hue lights are great and flexible and work mostly

Mostly I am very happy with my Phillips hue lights. They’re very flexible, they work great, they give you a good level of control depending on the bulb. Disadvantages include that if somebody flips the switch off, then lights are useless. Probably my biggest complaint is that whenever there’s a software upgrade the bridge loses communication with the mobile app on my phone. It seems they do these updates on long weekends, and I’m often out of town. Therefore it can be very frustrating to be away and find that none of my Philps Hue lights respond to my commands. That’s the bad news but The good news is that if you have automation turned on, the automation usually keeps working even though you can no longer control the lights while you’re away. Usually this requires you to come push the reset button on the hue bridge, after you come home. Then everything works fine again.

Description

The official Philips Hue app is the most comprehensive way to organize, control, and customize your Philips Hue smart lights and accessories. Organize your smart lights Group your lights into Rooms or Zones — your entire downstairs floor or all the lights in the living room, for example — that mirror the physical rooms in your home. Easily control your lights — from anywhere Use the app to control your lights anywhere you have an internet connection. Explore the Hue scene gallery Created by professional lighting designers, the scenes in the scene gallery can help you set the mood for any occasion. You can even create your own scenes based on a photo or your favorite colors. Set up bright home security Make your home feel safer, no matter where you are. The Security Center lets you program your Secure cameras, Secure contact sensors, and indoor motion sensors to send you alerts when they detect activity. Trigger light and sound alarms, call the authorities or a trusted contact, and monitor your home in real-time. Get the best light for any moment of the day Let your lights change automatically throughout the day with the Natural light scene — so you feel more energized, focused, relaxed, or rested at the right times. Just set the scene to watch your lights change with the sun’s movement, transitioning from cool blue tones in the morning to warmer, relaxing hues for sunset. Automate your lights Make your smart lights work around your daily routine. Whether you want your lights to gently wake you up in the morning or greet you when you get home, setting up customizable automations in the Philips Hue app is effortless. Sync your lights to TV, music, and games Make your lights flash, dance, dim, brighten, and change color in sync with your screen or sound! With the Philips Hue Play HDMI sync box, the Philips Hue Sync for TV or desktop apps, or Spotify, you can create totally immersive experiences. Set up voice control Use Apple Home, Amazon Alexa, or Google Assistant to control your smart lights with voice commands. Turn lights on and off, dim and brighten, or even change colors — completely hands-free. Use Siri Shortcuts for quick control Use the Shortcuts app to create shortcuts that you can place into widgets on your Home Screen for even faster control of your lights. Turn lights on or off, adjust their brightness and temperature, or set scenes — all without even opening the app. Learn more about the official Philips Hue app: www.philips-hue.com/app. Read the Philips Hue Privacy Notice at www.philips-hue.com/privacy. Note: Some features in this app require a Philips Hue Bridge.