Philips Hue App Reviews

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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.

Great for lights, but not flexible outside of lights. So I have just bought into the Philips Hue system, which has been great! It works great with HomeKit and HomePod, so it was an upgrade from my Kasa system. The lights are great! But I also bought the Hue smart plugs, and this app is not so great with them. It treats the smart plugs as lights, not as a separate category. I was gonna set them up for a space heater and a coffee maker but the app just straight up calls them "light". "Light info", "light behavior when power on", and they're all in the "Lights" menu with the lights. You can't even choose an emoji as the symbol, it's all different versions of light fixtures! I thought the bridge could be useful for other Zigbee devices I may get in the future. But after setting it all up, it's basically just using an additional outlet just for lights. So I think Philips Hue could be so much more, but in the end, the whole Light-focused app just makes this ecosystem so limited. Philips should try to make the app more flexible.

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.

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!?!?

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.

•••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!!

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

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

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

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!!!!

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.

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!

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

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.

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! :(

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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😀

Most Recent Update Made the App Infuriating to Use. I don’t know what happened with this most recent update, but I have had nothing but problems since. Routines aren’t functioning properly (turning the wrong lights at the wrong time), setting specific times for routines is a nightmare because the time keeps snapping back to whatever time it defaults to when you first create one, it takes forever to connect to it, the lights aren’t responding to what I do in the app (I have to do the action over and over before they finally respond). I also can’t add lights to zones anymore. The app will act like it added them, but then they’ll disappear from that zone a minute later. It’s also not been working properly with Alexa since the update. Only a select few lights will respond to Alexa commands, and they keep showing up as unresponsive in the Alexa app. I’ve never had problems with the app until the most recent update (the one that also changed the look of the GUI), which is why I will change my rating once this all gets fixed.

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.

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.

Every update breaks something. Ok, 3 strikes an your out. I installed a recommended update today and sure enough it broke every light and routine I had configured just like the two updates performed earlier this year. The app can now only turn and lights on or off, my color and brightness level settings only remain in effect for about 5 seconds and then something mysteriously changes all the lights to settings I did not specify. The same thing occurs if I manually adjust the settings, it’s now impossible to control colors or brightness levels on any light. The only solution I have found so far is to perform a factory reset of the hub (square) and re-create every light, room, and routine. I have a iPhone 7 running the latest iOS rev and my network works flawlessly with all my other apps and devices. If a solution exists on the hue website or anywhere else I cannot find it. Unless hue can provide a solution i would not recommend this app or the purchase of any hue equipment unless you are willing to reconfigure your entire system every time the release a buggy update. This is unfortunate as I really like the system when it worked.

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.

Philips is quality in everything!. Philips Hue is large and capable of making so much, yet operates with the innovation and customer service of a young start up. Everything they seem to create has quality and robustness built in, from the strength of their devices and components to the apps and hubs that run them. I only hope that with Apple HomeKit’s new update integration will be become even better and allow for more customization and opportunity for the end user. This is the one area which I am beginning to see Philips disregard. Techie customers in the IOT arena. Want the ability for customization on top of basic simplicity for those people in their families or work that are less techie. The future with HomeKit has great potential for allowing ease of use and advanced customization. I hope Phillips considers this as an important area of focus for future products.

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.

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.

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 don’t have a timer set to change from early morning getting ready to my work from home setting, which turns my living room into an office, and at 5:30 the lights at my desk, it darker while the lighting at my couch and TV change to the space a livingroom again. 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 scheduled the lights to turn a mellow coming soon for when I come home after dark. 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 hie light switches offer

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

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!

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!

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.

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

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.

Need to have a single login for all hue bridges. It is really annoying trying to keep this app working for more than on house. The way Philips has designed the app you have to have a separate account on their server for each Hue Bridge unit. So if you have two or more houses to monitor when youu try to switch from one house to another from a remote location the pp frequently fails because it is trying to use the wrong login id for the bridge you are trying to access. You then must manually log out of the server and login using the id for the bridge you want to talk to and HOPE that the app remembers the connection. There should be one single login id on the server and you should be able to have as many hue bridges reachable thru that id as you need. Somehow the Nest folks got this right on there remote access connections as did many other venders. I really generally like the hue light system; but the ISO app can be very painful to use.

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!!!!

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Some ideas for the Developers. Hi Hue Team, Some constructive feedback for a wonderful product. 1, please have a way to add a hue labs function on a scene page. Eg in my living room, one of the scenes should be the saved automation which has the living lights. Maybe in the labs page, have a add to a room option. 2, Is automations, you can select a scene. Now read point 1 above. Ie at 6pm, Hub labs setting 1 to start Eg colour loop. 3, with love, the hue labs entire layout is complicated and confusing. Make rating a button at the bottom, not something you have to scroll past. The enabling of the labs should be on the main page, then the edit button should make adjustments. My family needs me to edit labs. It is a mess. (With kindness) 4, ordering scenes on a room. This is hard to get where you want. They shuffle with each other. Would be nice to be able to leave gaps and not have it shuffle around. 5, if I order the scenes on the iPad for a room, they are not in the same Order on my phone. I get that you did this so all Members of the family can order their pages in the order they want, and too their scenes. But can you make a link feature in case you want them the same. My partner gave me her phone and I had to sort the scenes like I did on my phone. She wanted the same. 6, pretty please. Sensors, have staggered steps. Eg - light a and b on, Light a off after 3 mins, Light b off after 6 minutes (for example) I hope Some of the above is helpful.

Hue app doesn’t properly support Hue Go light. I bought a Hue Bridge, a 2nd gen Hue Go and installed this app. Very disappointed: the most basic feature – a battery indicator for the portable Hue Go – isn’t available: neither in the app nor on the light itself. The built-in light effects (e.g., Cozy Candle, Sunday Coffee, Meditation, Enchanted Forest, and Night Adventure) are not available in the app. And the formulas are hidden under too many layers of interaction (Home > Explore > Labs > Browse > Try > ...), cumbersome to reach, and not intuitive to configure. When I contacted Hue support, they didn’t seem in any hurry to add these basic features for the Hue Go or improve their app. So 1 star from me until this gets a major overhaul.

New Update Is Perfect!. This is exactly what I was wanting when I first got my Hue lights. At first the hardware was what I was looking for, however, the software was horrible, there was constant glitches and bugs in the algorithms, not enjoyable to use at all. Now everything is so much more enjoyable and easy to use. Thanks for giving the hardware products the app they deserve. Stoked with the new update!

Enjoy the UX, two tweaks needed. The guidance the App gives for initial setup is doable without being overwhelmed. I like the control sliders but transitioning between functionally identical modes that are presentationally different feels wrong. I wanted to send feedback without signing in to Facebook or Twitter and now I can on this invitational prompt. All the X widgets for backing out from a place in the App need to be consistently placed on one side. Sometimes the X is upper left or right, hate that. Once the lights are set, different tree layouts for architectural blueprint room mapping would be neat. The razzle dazzle effect gets old fast in the UX, suggest dialing that down after initial magical encounter. Maybe box and wiring diagram approach is more intuitive than plus or minus tile approach. Thank you Phillips Hue.

Works well for the most part. Have used my Hue Lights for the past few years without incident. However lately my old bridge (gen2) started disconnecting from network frequently and after messing around with it and a few resets and IP set up I gave up and got a new one. This led to my 2nd poor experience… there is no easy way to transfer from one bridge to another. Each light needs to be removed and re added however two of the lights won’t reconnect. I’ll probably need to manually add them tomorrow but overall I would say Hue is good most of the time but doesn’t handle exceptions well.

Amazing. Great app to control the lighting around your house. Have a setup of lights behind the TV, lamps beside the lounges, & a light above the bed. Can choose from many ranges of colour settings, as well as creating your own. Connects through wifi, so just open the app & dim or bright lighting is only a click away. Highly recommend getting this setup for your house, worth the money!

Definitely get this app. Definitely get this Philips hue app when buying your Philips hue products as it has all the features you need to automate and setup the full controls. This app works extremely well and keeps your products firmware software regularly updated with improvements and functionality.

Brilliant. Brilliant not only when turned up to 100% but brilliant in flexibility and ease of use. The new improved app makes it a breeze to control things. One of the most appreciated features is the away from home programming when on holidays - anywhere. Internet connectivity and full automation allows different rooms to be switched on and off with variable schedules to make the home appear occupied at night - A great security feature.

Something in the new update means two bridges aren’t supported. We have a large house which we have installed Phillips hues lights and switches throughout. As the bridges only support 50 devices we have two bridges (one for upstairs, one for downstairs). Something in the latest update means only bridge is active at a time (can’t switch between bridges like you used to). This means you have to remove and physically reactivate the second bridge when you want to use it. This essentially makes one of my bridges unuseable at any given time. Please fix this issue. Thanks

Latest update has made the app terrible. Prior to v4, this app was great: it was easy to navigate, everything was where you expected it to be, and it had great performance. Unfortunately the recent major update is atrocious and everything I liked about the app is gone. It’s bad enough that I’m not buying any new lights from Hue anymore. - It now takes *significantly* longer for the app to start-up. It should be as simple and quick as possible to turn your lights off/on, which is not the case anymore. Every time I want to quickly adjust a light I feel a little bit of frustration now that there’s this friction. - The app lags terribly, even on my high end devices. Nothing is smooth and there are noticeable delays whenever you press a button. Sometimes I try to do something in the app and it just doesn’t respond at all! When I get a better frame rate playing 3D games on my phone than turning off the lights you know somethings gone wrong! - Features like the Lab experiments thing have been removed. Who knows why? Why on earth would they remove features that worked great?!?!

Five stars for music sync. Entered the beta thing for music sync and it works really well. It’s a feature I’ve been waiting for and works without needing the microphone. Fantastic job guys! I might have one complaint about the light % adjustment, when I let go to set at x% brightness it will change by 1-2 values and it’s a tad annoying. First world problems. 😅

Recent updates causing issues. When I first purchased the Hue Phillips lights the app worked great. App updates starting 5 months ago have caused so many ongoing issues - slow connectivity to devices, location based automations don’t work, slow app loading times and overall worse experience then when I first got the app. I love the lights and after such an expensive investment, I hope Hue fixes these issues.

It’s broke. Latest update has made it impossible to switch between my two Hue homes. Stuck on one home/bridge. Also wanted me to re-verify my email address which I’ve used for years (which I did). When I log in it’s still stuck on the wrong bridge and there’s no way out. What a mess. Ok it’s working now. Needed to totally delete App,reload, reboot bridge, reconnect bridge. A great app for sure but the upgrade was a fail.

New update is terrible. The new layout looks much worse and is more confusing than the old version. Why fix it when it isn't broken? But my main issue is the removal of the widgets. I fully controlled my lights using the widgets and now they have all disappeared and I'm forced to use crappy shortcuts now instead! But it's not as simple as creating shortcut versions of my old widgets because somehow the names are still saved so I can't use the same names as my old widgets. WHY WOULD YOU CHANGE THIS? Please bring widgets back as this is a huge step backwards and my only real complaint.

Very good for family with young children. We have hue lightbulbs installed in both ours and the kids room. Its very convenient and easy to use for the young children. Especially in the cold weather, they don’t need to leave the bed to turn on the light in the middle of night if they need to look for sth or simply just get scared. Highly recommended to the family with young children.

Not too bad. Maybe I’m just blind but I don’t like the fact they took away the positioning tool, I found their new way of doing it but it’s only side to side on your desk, my lights are behind my monitor but it’s showing the colour of the bottom of my screen, the old way was so much better but after getting a new light strip, (which for some reason always comes up with the default colour when turned on instead of the saved colour like my original bars do) I had to set it up

Still not there. The first app you created worked great then this 2nd gen came out and it’s buggy and works when it wants to. Why is the there 2 spots for geo location setting just have it in one spot. So much set up for a silly scene feature but the one thing that won’t work that looked pretty cool is the timers accept when I start it.... nothing happens. Yes I have selected which lights to turn on and selected energise for all and when I click on start I’m just starring at the lights waiting for them to come on. Nothing. At least fix this please. I loved the simplicity of the 1st gen app but had to change because you weren’t supporting it anymore. Make it simple

Brilliant - Simple Perfection ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. This App along with the Hue lighting system is fantastic! Works first time every time. It’s very intuitive, super simple to program and create custom scenes. Plenty of other compatible Apps that compliment this one, but this is a must for configuration and maintenance. I also use some other plugins for custom automation programming whilst movies are playing in my Theatre Room. I highly recommended this system and this App. My only gripe, and it’s a very small one: The updates are a little slow, highly recommend you setup auto updates for something like 3am when you’re unlikely to be using the system. Well done to the developers and hardware engineers! Cheers, Dan

Great app but slight changes need to be perfect. Love the app and all my philips lights. The only constructive criticism I have is the swipe switches to turn lights on and off need to be changed to buttons (or at least have the option to change them). Opening the app quickly to turn a rooms lights off or on gets annoying when a slight miss-press means it just goes into the light setting page. A button would be a much better alternative. Other than that, great products

Anti-user and inconsistent. Couldn’t use light because of bad design.. The most stupid update methosld ever in history of apps. My HUE was old version out of the box and didn’t support dynamic. But update does not download automatically. And you can’t just select “Update”. It only updates by itself and People wait 5-12 hours for to to update! Mine displayed “update available” next day. Until it updated the Light I couldn’t use it. All because of this update “process”. It’s like simulation of bureaucracy within Hue App! Who makes such design decisions?

Power on behaviour. I set my outside lights on while I’m away for security. On the power on behaviour I set for about 35% but they always come on at 100%. Is this a glitch or am I doing something wrong? Otherwise I’m happy with my hue system. Edit: Later updates have rectified this issue. 5 stars

If zero was a score I’d use it.. Complete rubbish. I have been with Phillips Hue since they first came out. Decided to upgrade to Hue bridge v2 as 1 no longer supported and unable sync my new dimmer switch. I have a dozen lights through the house. App makes me go through the whole process of ticking each annoying box every single time it’s opened. Can’t find any of my lights so I had to go and add them manually then when I do, it asks me to drag lights to a room which I can not do, regardless of whether I select one, multiple or all of them. Also took three goes to find my manually added lights. Really bad experience and thinking of handing in the Phillips boots for a cheaper competitor. Very poor explanations on line and not what you’d expect from a closed eco system. Sort it out Phillips or you won’t see any vent of my money.

TEST BETTER NEXT TIME. I wish companies would test there products better before release. 1) Try and add new OUTDOOR Motion Sensor. I tested this on an iPhone and iPad (all OS up to date). I only managed to get it added, after the iPhone was left to go into sleep mode and awaken. The app hangs badly and performs poorly, the wait time was need for the app to progress to the next step. 2) I also had trouble adding an INDOOR Motion Sensor. This wasn’t as bad, but persistence in multiple attempts paid off eventually. IMO, the UI is designed ok, and the function use case is fine - IF IT WORKED PROPERLY. This is a failure to test properly issue.

The app is clunky and doesn’t have enough options. I have to click settings > accessories > (wait for an absurd amount of time) > to then be able to toggle accessories on and off. Can’t these be put under accessories in the home tab of the app under your rooms as accessories? That way we could turn them on and off with ease, or allow Siri to be able to toggle them on and off. Also, where did the long press the app icon shortcut menu go? You used to be able to long press the icon on the Apple Home Screen and a list of lights would pop up which you could toggle on and off. Can’t think of a reason why this function would be removed.

Really regressive update. Ignoring how buggy this sequence of updates have been this update has been a big disappointment in use and function. Every feature is now a lot slower, editing just about every item is more painful and the kids can no longer even edit light colours because you have to drag a tiny marker. The only positive is it looks a bit nicer but as the status shown is never accurate, what is the point. Our household is living on the one device that hasn't upgraded yet. To be clear for the developers response the app is sluggish ... the lights still perform fine.

Like it, but…. I’d make the per light bars on the lights tab thinner to allow more lights onto a single page without having to scroll so far when you have many lights (I have 18). I’m starting to play with more automation and am looking forward to continued innovation in the interactivity between the lights and the app. I like Hue overall but think it could be smarter in some ways too.

Best lighting choice. I love these lights and the seamless experience you have to with the app, it is so convenient and customisable when it comes to colours and routines and the app is very satisfying to use. Very organised, as it keeps my favourite colours together, can be named and can be changed at any given moment so the personalisation is limitless.

New UI overhaul is atrocious.. This app has always done everything I needed it to. Unfortunately after the latest update the new UI is terrible. It now takes several clicks on a light to get to the colour picker and the brightness slider is also completely out of whack with the rest of the UI. If you attempt to use the brightness slider on the first screen it is extremely difficult to slide between the 0-10% range due to the edge being so close to the edge of the screen. It also seems to have a very small trigger area for that slider which makes it hard to grab and move. Overall an update that is worse in every way. The UI in general is so disjointed and buttons and selections are not consistent at all. It’s amazing whoever does their UI got the approved for release. Hue/Philips managers and executive leadership obviously don’t have any globes of their own or they’d never approved this mess surely.

So far so good. I only got one bulb to try first. Didn’t like the yellowish lighting but getting used to it. It’s not bright enough. It will be good for the bedroom. It seems to work just fine. As long as hubby doesn’t turn the switch off the scheduling is spot on. I am getting the colorful ones soon and see how that goes. I get quite excited telling people that Siri can turn the light on and off. I can even use my Apple Watch too. Amazing technology. Will update once I get the computed ones.

Out of home control connection. My out of home control was connecting perfectly until I updated to this app version a few days ago. Strange considering this update was supposed to fix a problem I never had, but instead created that same problem. To fix I had to delete the app completely, reinstall, go to settings in the app and log back into out of home control. Let’s hope it keeps working because it is very inconvenient when away from home and lights can’t be controlled. Hope this might be helpful if anyone else encounters the same issue. My Hue system has always worked beautifully up until now.

Great app and lighting system.. This stuff is like science fiction, we have five lights that we can turn on and off by voice and we can select colours and intensity on the phone. We can put the timers and create our own environment. It has been very reliable. Only remember a couple of glitches, highly recommended.

Reliable and easy to use. Great app, intuitive UI to set up and control the lights. I find the connection via this app works better than through Apple’s Home app across all my devices (iPhone, Watch, iPad). The latter loses connection to the lights occasionally, whereas the Philips Hue app has so far been reliable and very responsive.

Don’t bother with Bluetooth anymore. I had 10 bulbs working on Bluetooth and synced with Alexa for 5 years. Suddenly they all stopped working at once. The Bluetooth app is no longer supported by Phillips apparently and the only other option doesn’t work no matter what I do. None of the globes can be found via Bluetooth. I cannot find ‘settings’ on the app and every time I go into it I have to go through the many many steps, including putting my name and email into it and selecting all the options again. 😡

Hue; Light up my life……. Awesomeness by light, easy system to connect, app functionality only compliments the easy of the system. The user interface from choosing the colours, for each light, setting up automation, syncing them with Siri was done without complication. Seeing the user interface on a similar system , triangles! Where one needed to be come a lighting engineer just set a colour. The RGB Mixing panel, the curves graph panel etc, etc. with Hue, and friends; 3 or 4 taps in the app; you got light and or custom light even set a new scene up. The only problem is that now I only light my space with Hue and Friends .

Better than Homekit. Home & Away doesn't work. Nothing changes when I come home or leave. Apart from that, I'm impressed. Hue has come a long way. There's a lot on offer now. The Home & Away timers are a joy to set up, and they trigger based on my location. Hue Sync for immersive gaming works amazingly well -- the PC app works like a charm and I had no idea my Hue lights could update so quickly. Room and Scene setup is very well designed and delightful to use. There's even a setup screen for Siri and Homekit pairing. Everything is graphical and actually fun. This is what Phillips should have done in the beginning.

Bring back the old App, no widgets and no vertical layout for lighting control = no fun!. I love the Hue product and have had no issues with the old app, it was 5 star. The new app on the other hand has taken two steps back. Lost widgets create accessibility issues (shortcuts are no good as they take up too much room on screen and can be complex for some to create). Change from vertical stacking of controlled devices in a room to horizontal is just a crazy UX mistake. Previously when you open a room you could see 5 controlled loads vertically but now only 3 items then you have to scroll left… not great for environments that have many controlled items. C’mon George Y, I know your team can do better 🤓

Love the Scenes. I love the app and that I can create scenes from my holiday photos. I have a great scene based on the Melbourne skyline at night. There are two small problems; sometimes when the app opens, lights turn on full at random and, the arriving home feature is unreliable. The lights, indoor and out, are worth the investment, and the customizable switches work perfectly in any setting (no more stubbed toes in the night with a switch I can leave on my bedside table!).

Huge step backwards. Not sure where to begin. The room controls assume you want all lights to be changed at the same rate. Changing individual lamps in a room has become very difficult with the UI having small controls to change individual lights. On top of that there is a bug which stops you changing the colour of an individual lamp in a room (it defaults to the first lamp in the room). A really rush through app, no respect to the previous functionality and design cues. A real shame for such a premium product.

Not bad but not great. It does everything I want it to- turn off, on, change brightness- all from my phone. Don’t bother programming wake up and night times with this app though. Originally bought hue as a light alarm clock, but the app will forget your programs frequently enough that it’s too annoying to reset and reprogram them multiple times a week. There are multiple issues like this that have prevented me from investing further. Apparently these issues go away with hue bridge but it’s a lot of money to invest for something that has been disappointing in their “trial” product

Update removed useful features. No idea what they did or why they did it. There is no logic to the update nor can you get the support you need for the app. The best most useful feature was the countdown timer. I go to bed at different times and used to turn on a 30 minute fade out timer to help me fall asleep. Gone. Or I used to set a timer to shut lights off when i left a room to give me some light because I charge my phone in a different room. Gone. Why get rid of a functional integral part of the app? And why is everything “sideways” now? You no longer swipe up from the bottom of the screen to see other light settings, you now swipe to theleft…Why? No other app has this backwards thinking. They ruined a good thing. Have also had more issues with connectivity to my lights now. I change the scheme and the light stays stuck on the previous colour. Or has a serious lag. Never an issue before. Tragic, unfun and unhelpful app now.

Quality and performance. I was recommended Phillips Hue by an engineer friend. You know the sort - researches and does things thoroughly. I bought the system from Bunnings. Quite a few elements which makes it expensive but the build quality and end result is first class. I am now starting to build on the system to bring the garden to life at night.

Love love - Hue App. Have used this for years now. Love the UX and ever changing colour profile settings for variety. Even the bespoke settings - We love the dark blue for a kids room night light for our son, and a soft, moody amber when watching Tv at night. I enjoy the clean white / blue light pre-set as ‘energise’ or ‘concentrate’, to get me in work mode during the mornings.

Not their finest update. Don't know why my previous review was removed. Anyway, as I said, the colours of the lights in the new so are way off. White lights are now shown as a dull tarnished gold. It just looks weird. And as others have pointed out, the update of some existing automations didn't come through. And you're not given any indication as to what failed. Which leaves it you to go through all your automations trying to figure that out. That's just careless programming. Wish there was a way to revert to previous version.

Great product, but please bring widgets back. I’ve been a very happy consumer with my Phillips lighting for a couple of years now. Smart lighting is incredible, and in my experience compared with other brands Phillips allows for the most control in getting the right light temperature for my needs. I’m disappointed that the recent IOS update has removed the Hue widgets. This may be an apple issue rather than a hue one? I much preferred the interface, icons and softer colours of the Hue widgets instead of the large, bright garish icons available with Apple shortcuts. The widget change has also created an accessibility problem for me. It would be great to see the old widgets back - thanks

Bridge is lagging behind. I used to love this app. In many ways I still do, but the shine is wearing off. It seems that every new device is released with very buggy software, and also uses more and more of the bridge’s very limited resources. The aspirations of the system developers is far outweighing the basic design of the hardware. The result is that I now need three bridges to support my system, and because the developers never allowed for this I also have to have three accounts, and because there is no communication between the bridges I have to manually swap between them in the app. Worse still, no communication between bridges means that a switch or sensor cannot activate lights on different bridges. I get constant notifications of new scenes, each of which uses more precious memory, but a memory upgrade or interconnecting bridges seems not to be a priority. I don’t have a particularly large house, yet I still need 3 bridges. As it stands, it looks like the Hue system is realistically limited to a one or possibly two bedroom apartment if 100% of the lights are to be controlled.

Why update?. The app used to work flawlessly, no lag, speedy interface. It was great. Since the update the app is very slow and there is now a noticeable lag between the app and the light. Also a random scheduled lights on appeared when I updated, it took me a few days to work out why the lights were turning on. The layout of the app has also changed, I’m sure I will get used to navigating around the app new layout the slow interface and lag is an issue they need to fix.

New app is poorly thought out from user perspective. New app is pretty poor compared to previous app. The usability is really poor with features loved in the old app no longer available in the new one. New app is hard to add new lights or devices and setting up the timers is painful and doesn’t fully work. Also whats with the new fade feature. If I want the lights off I want them off, not fade over 15 minutes or so. They took a perfectly good platform and ruined it

Really simple to use, great for setup and controls.. The app and whole hue integration system and accessories have been great. Purchased and have setup half the house with the other half to go as well as some more accent lighting in the future. However the accessory limit will likely require a 2nd hub eventually where the app begins to fall short. It would be a perfect 5 if you could control multiple hubs at once without changing. HomeKit integration can get around this but honestly prefer this app over the home app. If being able to control all lights in a multi hub setup could be added it would honestly be as close to perfect as possible.

App works well overall. Overall the Hue lights and sensors are excellent, and the current version of the app is good. I move back and forth between the Hue app and the Apple Home app. Both have areas of relative strength. Hue more reliably reflects the actual status of lights, though. The app would benefit from having more layers of grouping, to accomodate lights with multiple globes. Globe, light, room and zone are the four layers we have; the app supports three layers. Also, our system has run out of capacity to add scenes etc (hitting a current ecosystem limit - not an app problem of course), so overall the digital infrastructure needs work.

Great system as a whole. This lighting system works really easily and is simple to set up. There is one thing I would add. I’d like to give my cleaners control of the lights by an app when they are here but not have full control of the system. Could a future update include this feature (ability to invite guest control).

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Update it back please.. The new update is so much harder to use. Please change it back to the old simple version (June 2021). Where is the colour wheel?

Love it. I use this app daily. Love being able to have red light at night

Multi-Bridge!. I agree with some of the other reviewers when I saw that the only thing I don’t like about Hue is that you have to manually switch bridges if you have lights at the office and your home. The app should auto detect the bridge on the network. I really hope this is in the works!

GARBAGE. App finds bridge then says not found!. Garbage app. I changed router. Google wouldn't see my bridge anymore. Had to complete delete my hue account cause it wouldn't find it, then delete and reinstall hue app. Start from zero, create account, finds my bridge and I press the button,bridge connected! Next screen bridge not found! This is not the first time this happens. Uou guys need to test in a lab what happens when someone changes router or ISP. Very frustrating for a system I pit thousands of dollars in. I'm a network sysadmin too, cab only image what regular users go through.

Demonic. The app will force updates by removing existing functions even though the lights have never changed. I only ever touch this app when I’m waking up to leave or turning out lights to sleep so updates are never convenient.

Widget gone?. Used to be able to change scenes quickly with the widget but my app updated and now it’s gone? When I checked in app it said I have to use a shortcut which is stupid and annoying because it has even more steps than the original widget.

Make available the old app in the AppStore. The new app is really bad because lots of important features are not present anymore. As a developer I understand the software lifecycle but either the old app should be available or someone forgot to click on the beta button. This new app is really scarce and don’t fit the needs of most of us.

Force touch and color wheel. Nice update, but when force touching on a light to open the color menu, it picks the color under the thumb when the color wheel appears. Fail.

New update sucks. There is so much lag and waiting time when using the app and waiting for the lights to respond. Also why have the widgets been removed?!? I feel like the app has been downgraded not upgraded.

With every update the usability gets worse. The scenes widgets are gone and instead you need to go through the Shortcuts app to configure them all over again. Gone is easy access to Widgets on my phone by simply swiping to the right. The learning curve is ridiculously high for a simple light switch operation.

Pls bring back old app. The new app Interface is horrible. Why change such a good thing. Been a long time user. Really unimpressed with the new app update. Sometimes leaving things the way they are is a good thing.

I was hoping to finally have updated Widgets. iOS 14 came out a year ago, and we were still waiting on a revamped Widget we could put on our Home Screen… And now with this v4, the old widget just disappeared. Wow. Edit: Also realized the Apple Watch App is gone. Now I have to unlock my phone, open the App and select my room every time I want to change the scene or turn off the lights. Ughhh why?!?

David. Love The lights are fine but they’re quite expensive. I will do the whole house if you want that expensive but what I have is worth it I love them every time I get home. The lights turn on if I leave the time lights turn back off incredible I love them. Good luck on your quest, David Carulla

Really frustrating. New app is slower, has less features and more difficult to navigate. Losing the timer is a huge deal breaker and wish I never invested in such expensive lights knowing I wouldn’t have that feature. If I could go back to the old app I would, no good new features to this one.

User. System works well but bulbs are very expensive and it is hard to fing multicoloured bulbs

Major downgrade. The new app design is terrible and glitchy, not to mention the removal of the convenient widget icon for absolutely no reason. This is some hot garbage

Great product. Terrible app.. The device itself is great. Bulbs are bright and responsive, color is clear. But the app is absolutely terrible. It constantly wants me to update and now it’s stuck in this loop of connecting and not connecting and it won’t even let me update anymore.

Terrible. Suddenly decided I need to create an account so it can harvest my data and won’t even connect to my light anymore.

New version is the worst version he. New update is the worst. So slow, barely usable on older devices. And where are the widgets; is using Shortcuts considered an upgrade to widgets?….

Hue bridge. I all ready spent a lot of money for two bulbs and it only tells me now that I need a hub and I wasn’t planing on spending like 80 bucks just so I can use two bulbs

Worst part of the ecosystem. This app does a terrible disservice to the entire Philips Hue ecosystem on iOS. It constantly overrides HomeKit under the guise of bringing the apps in “sync”. Instead it overrides rooms you created in Apple's home app, deletes non-hue devices, and generally messes up your settings. I recommend deleting the app after every time you need it to set up a new device, and keep it off your phone and away from your HomeKit system.

Where are the widget?. Where is widget support? Why is it taking so long.

New update to widgets is awful. I can’t believe you got rid of the proper widgets and make users create shortcuts for everything we want to control. Would give zero stars if I could.

Hue bridge?!?!?!?!. I bout a philips hue White and colour ambiance E 12 lightbulb. Nowhere on the box or the manual mentions this bridge but when I open the app it request me to hook it up, I called Support the gentleman was very helpful in helping me realize that I was screwed by Phillips. I’m going to get my money back from Home Depot ,hopefully, I don’t have the receipt anymore so... I was laughing to myself driving home thinking about the Phillips CDI and how much of a fail that was and That Phillips has seem to turn themselves around boy was I wrong you would think it would say on the box that I NEED the bridge that retails for 70 CANADIAN DOLLARS, about the same price as the bulb it’s self, what a waste of time!

Garbage app with tons of bugs. This app has lots of blocker bugs, I couldn’t complete adding lights — app dead with a white screen after.

What happened to the timer??. Why has the timer setting been removed? That was the one setting I used daily and it makes the use of the lights so much less user friendly. So disappointing.

New design sucks. All people involved in this change should consider a change in careers.

Awful update. The new update is awful. So disappointed. Bring back timers for the love of god.

No Widgets =1 star app. Took 30 mins to learn how to use Shortcut and setting it up. Found out is much slower than widget and inconvenient. Will not buy any Phillips product anymore.

No widget. Slow official support.. No widget support, is expected to work through home app and hue app. You can't just access hue app through the widgets or Lock Screen shortcuts. Home app always slow to respond or refresh rather than direct control the hue app has, and as I don't have a Apple pod and iPad doesn't act as home control anymore I assume it's slower than normal. Very irritating.

Failed “Update”. Recent update removed important functionality, namely the old widgets, and in turn gave a slow buggy app that makes previously simple tasks more more time consuming.

Great lights. I have them in my house and I love them

Improvements. Can you make the fire and the candle effect use the hue colour orb besides just warm orange tones

Functional garbage; such a shame. Only the simplest and least thoughtful interfaces. I suspect that there are no designers, so unfortunate software developers essentially just finger paint "hue" into the resulting mixture of vomit and feces. Has been getting worse as the cramming of ill-conceived features into the hub continues year after year, and the iOS app's design ceaselessly does nothing to improve the hack-job of the hub and app software which is instrumental to overall user experience of the amazingly brilliant hardware products. I see a new parent brand (signify) hasn't alleviated the onslaught of impressive mediocrity and quasi-incompetence.

Good. Works great

Why remove the widget??. Why would you remove the widget? iOS shortcuts doesn’t cut it. That was one of the best features of the app.

Needs multi bridge update. I love the look and function of this app except the lack of multi bridge support. Having to toggle between them is not support. If other third party apps can do it seamlessly so can Hue. The only reason that I use this instead of the others is that my husband really likes the handy bar interface. I like it too. And as soon as they update the multi bridge function I will spend more on outdoor lights. C’mon Hue take my money.

Used to love this App. This app was great until the latest update. The removal of widgets and the forced usage of shortcuts is disappointing.

One Star, lack of real widget support. The latest update removed the widget support and forces users to create shortcuts on iOS which is MUCH slower than before where it was near instant response. Absolute trash can of an update and Philips should be ashamed and called out for their laziness of dropping their old widget support. One star for ease of use, and one star for losing customer trust.

Whoever made this app, needs to be fired. Horrible experience with this app, 80% of the times are unable to connect, and I see this developer always play innocent in their comments when people are commenting on the connection issues! Why the hell you play like that when everyone knows that you know what exactly is going on with your garbage app! For that, you actually deserve NO star at all!

Widget update sucks. New update to widget is HORRIBLE. So inconvenient. Old widget was so easy and user friendly. Loved my hue lights before this update. Now I’m thinking of switching.

New app is awful. From the awful skeuomorphic buttons to all of the extra presses to adjust anything - the new hue redesign is one of the worst failures I’ve ever seen in a modern app. Did they even test the app? Who thought any of this UI / UX made sense or was a good choice? They’ve somehow made it worse than it was before. Baffling. Hue lightbulbs are great but the app has always been the weak link. And it just got even worse. Shameful.

Poor design, way over-user friendly. No timer? That was the best part of the app and now it’s gone. The new design is for four years old children. Disappointing…

Lights. Love, so fun

Mellon. Who ever did that latest patch is a Mellon head. Try to turn on bedroom lights and tells me I have multiple lights. 5 years never had that problem. Tell Alexa to turn on all bedroom lights and apparently even thou in deferent groups my porch lights kitchen light and counter lights are in my bedroom. Good job guys.

Widget. From the app, it says that you can control the light by adding a shortcut thru the notification center, but on my iphone XR I can't manage to add the widget because Hue isn't in the options. I was able to add it easily on my iphone 6, any clues? All in all the sync with the lights are good and I don't have other problems with the app.

Widgets replaced with shortcuts ruins the app. Old widgets worked great, one click on, click again to turn off. Replacement with shortcuts that take too long if they work at all. How can such an obvious backtrack in functionality get through on an update.

Latest update broke widgets. Latest iOS version. My existing widget disappeared. If I search for Hue or Philips in the widget search nothing comes up.

update broke shortcuts. shortcuts stopped working on wifi since last update

Now REQUIRES Cloud account. You can’t just completely change what I purchased and not expect a negative review.

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No longer able to use app. I have over a $1000 invested on lights from Hue, and the latest updates completely fail to function. I’m talking about an immediate crash on app load. I have multiple iOS versions across multiple iPhones to test this on. I have also swapped out my networking hardware from custom (from custom Ubiquiti Networks UniFi APs and router to a stock Cox modem/router combo, then finally to a stock Google Fiber modem/router combo). Despite extensive troubleshooting (network packet captures, firmware resets, reinstalling iOS, you get the drift) this continues to fail. Unfortunately my equipment was purchased about two years ago, so it’s quite difficult to see any path forward from here other than whining on the App Store as I’m doing now. Hopefully stability across disparate network and phone configurations will help. If you guys at Philips need a multiplexer for testing your apps across all configurations of iOS and physical iPhones, just holler - it’d be worth the free labor if it gets the most critical and expensive piece of my home automation working again :-/

Hue is awesome. Hue is great, once you have the bridge and lights installed properly it runs smoothly and is user friendly compared to many of the cheaper competitors apps/lights I’ve seen. It’s perfect for setting the atmosphere and on all occasions. Date night, movie night, just reading in peace, holidays, I even set mine for my favorite sports teams colors on game day. I never really thought about how much lighting influences our living spaces until my first hue starter kit, now I’ve been adding it to more rooms and couldn’t imagine living without it. I tell people it’s not only just fun and cool but it’s also good for mental health, the right light at the right time can really improve your headspace. Def get hue if you want to make a room pop without doing any physical alterations.

Give an option to preview a scene rather than just changing in real time…. Really? Fake reviews? To make up for how terrible you’ve made the app?? Because they definitely have. 2 things that stand out most to me are not being able to order automations chronologically but only alphabetically. This gets confusing and seeing as both are important methods for sorting you’d think it would be an option at the least. The other most annoying thing is that when creating an automation, it’s reflected on the lights as you set what is supposed to happen?! Example: you’re in bed late at night and want to set an automation to have a scene come on at a certain time in the morning. Instead of simply choosing “energize” or whatever scene and being done, whatever you choose is reflected live to all the lights so that your significant other is now awake because trying to set an automation meant having to turn all the lights in the room that were off to full brightness.

Great when it first came out. When I first got the app when it FIRST came out, it was great and everything worked like it was supposed to……. NOW, and has been for a long time, super slow to respond to any commands, whether I’m home or not. Doesn’t matter. Half the time I tell it to turn off or turn on the lights; the app responds but the lights do not. I’d also say that the geofencing function, which used to work great originally, works correctly maybe half the time as well. Sometimes I come home and all the lights are on as if they never shut off in the first place (confirmed by my surveillance cameras) and sometimes I come home and the lights didn’t come on at all. It’s amazing to me how developers usually come out with a great product; then somehow manage to completely screw it up with “upgrades” or “enhancements” or “updates”. Please, just make the stupid app work like you advertise it to. That would make all of us happy again. Especially us long term supporters of your product.

Hue light owner for the past 2 years. I got the Phillip’s hue lightbulb 2 years ago as a gift. So far works great! I love that you can set for light to turn on/off at desired time, great when you’re traveling. Also the wake up feature is amazing. And just adjusting brightness as needed is great. Barely use the many colors, but they’re there when needed it. The only annoying thing is that sometimes when I get home with full hands, can’t just flip a switch, I have to grab my phone to turn on light (I don't have Alexa or google to say it). But is only annoying at that moment, once lights on, I forget about it. Overall very pleased. PS: hating that I can’t post because nickname taken. I have tried so many and everything is taken. Never writing a review here again, lol. But I wrote so much that I will post this one.

Frustration!. I love the hue bulbs and they have been really nice in a home with very little overhead lighting. Everything hardware wise usually works fine. I am beyond frustrated with the app. I tried to set up automations for sunset in several rooms and they just do not run. No errors or indication of why, they just simply don’t work. The lights are always “on” from the switches and are able to be turned on and off manually from the app but no matter how many times I have retried the sunset automation it doesn’t work. And I can only try once a day because sunset only happens once a day! So I thought maybe I could connect hue to Apple Home and set up an automation from there but sadly… that doesn’t work either. I get a weird error message when I try without any further prompt for help or guidance. Overall not catastrophic because I can just manually turn the lights on when it starts to get dark (like a normal person), just disappointed that it’s an advertised feature that just doesn’t work at all.

Love Hue Lights. I’ve been using Hue lights for better part of a decade now. Have never had any issues with the lights or the App(s) while running simple clock / timer routines, geo-location routines, to more complex IFTT routines. And they are always working on improving their App(s), fixing bugs and adding new features. Truly impressed with Phillips and their team! Their new lights have even gotten better than their original lights. They are richer with their colors, clearer, and more precise on brightness. Sadly I’m all light tapped out… I don’t need anymore. And due to how long these lights will last, I won’t need to replace them for another decade. In comparison, I have had to replace some other LED bulbs from other “big” manufacturers 4x now in the ~10 years I’ve had my Hue bulbs. Another testimony to Phillips engineering.

Very annoying UI issues in the new version. I have used Hue now for about two years and just recently updated to the new app. I like some of the the new features, but three are VERY annoying: 1. Why when in a room do you have to scroll left to right to see all the lights and scenes? Why not just list them to fit in the mobile device screen and allow us to scroll up down? It’s a much easier/faster action. Scrolling now means you have to touch one of the small light or scene widgets and not just the screen. Plus, you can grab a widget for a light or scene and move it, but only in the horizontal layout it is in. Why can we not arrange the screen? 2. Why is it not possible to just set a scene on ONE light now? If you turn off all lights but one and then want to set a scene for that one light, you cannot. You get the color selection wheel for color selection and the scenes are gone (for example nightlight). If you go back and set a scene, all the lights in the room turn on. This is confusing and not very user friendly. Scenes should be available for the room AND each light. 3. The brightness selection bar is not very precise. You can get to a brightness, but when you let it go, it often jumps 2 or 3 percent up or down from the setting. The Touch Bar plus a +/- button set would be nice. For those of us that like consistency without having to keep adjusting or using Google/Alexa.

HomeKit integration still broken. I bought into the Hue ecosystem because I had several problems with LIFX and Nanoleaf integrating them into HomeKit. I really didn’t want a hub just to have smart lights, but was driven to it by having failed twice before. I get the Hue hub 2.0, plug into the Ethernet cable and power. I try to add it to HomeKit, both through this app and through HomeKit. Failure yet again. I rebooted hubs, routers, HomeKit hubs, internet gateway, etc. until I was blue in the face. I eventually reached out to Reddit and was guided to the app iConnectHue. That app successfully reset the HomeKit integration and I was able to bring the hub into HomeKit through the Apple Home app. While I appreciate all of the many features of these lights, this has been a problem since at least iOS 17. A known issue that still isn’t resolved. Nevertheless, it has all ended well.

Crashes over and over: can’t use my lights. I haven’t used my hue lights in sometime and downloaded the app today. I was unable to see my zigbee bridge and had to type in a manual IP address. trying to sync by pressing the button on the hardware crashes the app repeatedly. I can only use my really expensive lights as bright white lights now. Update: I was able to install the now unsupported app and use it to upgrade my firmware on the hub. Subsequently, I then used the new app (which could then see my hub and not continuously seg fault) to upgrade my hub firmware. After these steps I was able to then update the firmware on my six lights - this worked and I was able to finally use my investment. Unfortunately, the update bricked one of my lights so I’m down to five, which is a real pain. Unfortunate since I only got a few hours of life from a $60 bulb. I was posted overeats and my lights were in storage, so no warranty. Can’t be sure it’s the apps fault, but still... hopefully newer generation bulbs are more robust.

Hue-xymoron. I usually try to review with users in mind and trying to be proactive toward the developers. But this app does not do any good to the company behind the product it represents, Phillips. The hardware is spectacular but the app has a mind of its own. It never does what it is intended to do. I programmed the lights in my bedroom to go on around 10 minutes after the alarm goes off. First I had that working all workdays. And it was working. One day I took away Friday. The graphic interface seemed to have understood. I saved the changes. It showed up, but ... the lights kept doing the same thing. This week I reprogrammed everything from the beginning of the week. Friday should have been different. But no, the lights woke me up again. And that is only one example of the many things that the app does by itself nd there’s no way to make it comply. My opinion is they want to show off with so many fancy ideas, the interface is very nice, etc. But the app is bad, very bad. And in other apps the developers respond. On this one they don’t. I wonder if they read the reviews.

Love Huey 😎🐝🌸🐰🙋🏻‍♂️💜. Hue lights work beautifully 😎💜🌸🤗🪴🧋 I have been happily using it for many many years. I also have the hue bridge. I have lights in the living room and bedroom and I use the app, Siri, Alexa and some accessories to control the lights. I also set times when the lights turn on and off. I have a hue motion sensor at night so when I go to the bathroom my salt rock crystal lamp turns on for 1 minute when triggered which is what I programmed it to do. I also have a Schlage encode plus font door lock (which is fantastical)and I programmed it so when I lock the door the hue lights turn off and when I unlock the door the lights turn on. I set it for certain hours so I’m the morning it turns off and at night it turns on. I also programmed the 4 button wall switch to turn on and off certain lights and activate certain scenes.

This app makes scene setting a breeze. We have loved this app from the moment we installed. Pairing with the lights is simple. Most of them find themselves. We use it with the light control hub and have set up great things. One helps when it’s dark in the morning. It comes on low and gets brighter over the next half hour, making it much easier to awake when it is dark outside. The full range of colors we use to the whites are all governed by one app. We can sync them and truly set a mood. The light strip above our built in is full Spectrum so we adjust the color as needed to fill in some light to avoid eye strain in a darkened room and choose the appropriate colors. The app has many really great pre-built options plus you can make your own. Love this app, love the Philips Hue system. Wish it wasn’t so costly but it is worth it!

Great product - terrible app interface after recent update. First let me start by saying I am a huge enthusiast of the Phillips Hue lightbulbs. I have a proximately 20 bulbs in my home and the Phillips Hue bridge and I’ve use the products for over three years now. I think they’re great and reliable and I couldn’t be happier with the lightbulbs. The app was extremely functional and useful until a recent upgrade that specifically change the user interface experience. While the new look is undeniably sleek this app is now the LEAST user-friendly smart home app that I have downloaded on my phone right now. I have multiple rooms created and can no longer easily control individual lights assigned to those rooms. The ability to control the lights is there however it just is no longer easy to do in this new app layout. It is a real shame they put more emphasis on looks instead of user experience in this latest app update. Here’s to hoping they fix that sometime soon!

Says it works with Alexa but it doesn’t. I got the bt lightbulbs around Christmas time. Its been about a month since I started using them and they already have stopped working. The first time I got them, set up was confusing because there are three separate instructions depending on what all you have. But I finally figured out how to get it WITHOUT the hue bridge. They’re just Bluetooth lightbulbs. Also, turns out if you don’t have the bridge, it won’t change colors or scenes. Thought that was a little misleading on the box. So anyways, I managed to get it set up and even my Alexa echo was working with it. But now for the past week or so, they’ve become unresponsive and nothing I’ve done has worked. I was so frustrated I even reached out to Phillips through Facebook messenger to get some answers. They told me to delete everything and start over. So I did. And they still don’t work. I can get them to work through their own app. I tell Alexa to find new devices. She says she’s found both my lights and I can now control them. Okay Alexa then turn off lights. “Sorry lights are unresponsive please check power supply….” It’s just ridiculous to have to jump through all those hoops to get it to work but then it doesn’t work. And I really don’t know what else there is to do other than look for a different brand of lights and go through the whole thing again and hope they work.

Since Update Hue Bridge 2nd Gen Worthless. I have been using hue lights for many years across multiple properties and have generally been very happy. Over the last few days the hub in my house has become useless. I got a message that it was reset (firmware update per The Google) and now it is not recognized and the app just spins when trying to connect. Will not let me delete the bridge and just spins. It does not recognize the bridge when trying to add and just spins. When I consider an iPhone upgrade because I am ready to throw my phone in frustration it just spins. No matter what I do it just spins. I am getting dizzy looking at the spinning. Anyway going to go and buy a new bridge now because I cannot handle the spinning anymore. FYI I have tried doing it on my phone, my wife’s phone and my iPad and the bridge connection just spins. I even reset to factory settings and guess what? You got it, it just spins. I would definitely consider a different option if I was not already so committed to this brand and best/worst of all I probably still have 32,000 hours left on the bulbs. That is a lot of spinning.

Philip’s Hue Bulbs & App are awesome, no lie. I bought these bulbs about 2 years ago because I’m a color light feind and these are the bees knees in the world of custom WiFi lighting. The app really is simple as can be and that’s the purpose of apps in general, I’ve had other products like this where the app is either too limited or too clunky and complex or it has connection issues all together. The coolest feature it has is the copy cat scene function - basically you upload a picture and it takes the most common colors within it then disperses them to each light & when I tell you it is a absolute VIBE… it really is a VIBE haha. Me and my fiancé took a picture at the beach together, uploaded it to our hue app & lit a beach breeze scented candle, it truly feels like we’re right back at that beach! Never gets old. So yeah it’s such an immersive experience of lighting I highly suggest it.

Multiple Out of Home Control. I’ve been a Hue light lover since they first came out. I’ve outfitted my entire home and both of my parents. I’ve even help several friends set up their home . I’ve recently purchased a second home and immediately add hue lights . I easily added the second bridge to the app to control the lights while at the house but was disappointed that you can only control one home with the Out of Home control. I was told that in order to control both homes with Out of Home Control I will need to set up a separate hue account. This seems simple but it is not . There isn’t a way to log out of the app and log back in with a separate account. Please add the option to log out of the hue app so a user can log back in with a different account or even better make Out of Home Controls available for multiple homes.

Siri and HomeKit are still pretty dismal. First off, I find it to be incredibly stupid that you can’t have scenes named the same for different rooms. Hue provides several default scenes (i.e. Relax, Concentrate, etc.) for each room, yet in order to use them with Siri you have to rename them. So I’m somewhat at a loss as to why I can’t just say, “Hey Siri, set Bedroom to Relax,” “Hey Siri, set Living room to Relax.” I feel like this would be so much easier rather than trying to remember what you were forced to rename the relax scene to in each room. Then if you get the wrong scene, Siri responds with “Sorry, I don’t know that one” and you have to open up your phone and load the app anyway. Secondly, it’s also a huge pain that you have to go through the “HomeKit & Siri” section to manually name, select the room, AND select the scene if you actually want to have the scene added to use with Siri. Why can’t they just be added automatically or at least just have a single menu option that says “Add to HomeKit & Siri”?

Great product.. What I love most about these lights is their versatility. Whether I'm setting a mood for a movie night or need bright light for working, Hue lights offer a wide range of colors and brightness levels to choose from. The ability to control the lights remotely via my smartphone is a game-changer, providing both convenience and a bit of fun. Another standout feature is the integration with smart home devices. I can now control the lighting with voice commands, which feels like living in the future! The energy efficiency of these LED lights is also noteworthy, providing a bright light while saving on electricity bills. Overall, Hue lights are a fantastic investment for anyone looking to enhance their home lighting experience. They offer unmatched control, flexibility, and convenience that have brightened up my daily life.

First time ever writing a review about an update. I have been using this app for years and have always loved it and these lights really are amazing! They are all over my house and still havnt had to replace any bulbs after 6 years of daily use!!!! The update- The new app update is a pain! My two main issues. I change colors a lot and I don’t see the color pallet where I could drag around to color options (I used this a lot)! The other change I don’t like is when you are selecting a color scheme it zooms in and brings that forward. So that if I want to change to another scheme at that point I have to swipe left and right, where previously I could select a scheme then pick another further down the page with still being able to see all the color schemes and not have to scroll through.

Outdoor Motion Sensor. Another update, and yet, we still can’t do much of anything with the outdoor sensor except turn lights on and off. We can’t even easily check the outdoor temperature using the Hue app. Imagine the things we could do if we could access the lux settings and the temperature settings to set up routines. Even more if they integrated into Alexa and the Home app. Get it together Hue!! Let us use what you sold us to it’s full potential!! Thanks for responding, but a notification doesn’t do squat for us! I want to ask Alexa what the outside temp is, I want lights inside to come on at a certain outside lux level, maybe I want the A/C or heat to come on when the temp is too hot or too cold. I don’t even think that I can receive a notification when there’s motion detected outside! I want to use what’s already built into the product using Hue and Alexa routines/formulas!!! And I don’t want to use one of your Lab formulas. I want a tested and proven formula built into the app since I’m not getting paid to be your beta tester!!

Obsessed with Philips Hue Smart Lights. A visiting Electrician told me about Smart lights as I had to reach behind a chest of drawers to flip a wall switch for an outside light. My home WiFi supports many Smart devices. Currently I have a couple Hue hubs as they are fairly inexpensive in sets with Philips Hue bulbs. They are straight forward once you turn the light switch On and let your home Wifi identify or enter the device by serial Number. You can rename the light, create rooms to add your lights, schedule them on/off, change colors/scenes and add music. Just added kitchen under cabinet lights that make all areas of my kitchen well lighted for all my kitchen tasks. They cost more but they are fun, functional and smart. I’m using a spare IPad tablet with only the light apps for anyone that stays@my house when I am traveling. Thanks so much Philips Hue. Barbara in Wa State

Disappointed.. Updated August 4th, 2014 After some app updates and resets, the app is working better. Changed from 2 stars to 4 stars. The app is much letter than before the major update, but some UI changes are a little wonky. ——— At first, the new update ran great and I didn’t have any issues. For whatever reason now, my lights take 10-15 seconds to show any sort of change. Simply turning on and off the lights takes 20 seconds. At first I thought my gen1 bridge was dying so I replaced it. I’ve factory reset my gen2 bridge about 5 times and re set everything up so many times over. 3rd party apps like on switch control lights better and immediately. I gave this app two stars instead of one because I’ve had my Phillips hue bulbs for almost 5 years now and they’ve been really good to me. But this app has made working with these bulbs a pain and I’ve wasted soooooo much time trying to get the app to work properly. I’ve even reset my router and managed switch to default to see if it’s a network issue. It’s not. The hue app is constantly connecting and reconnecting and failing to connect over and over. Extremely frustrating. You guys can do better. You teased this app update for so long and I held off getting rid of these bulbs hoping this update would fix my issues. Please take the time to address this app and fix these bugs.

Why?. I have about 30 active Hue lights in the house. And have been a user since 2014. I’ve gone through countless app updates and one major app change. This one is, by far, the worst one yet. I was very used to and fond of the widget feature. It just worked. The whole automation/shortcuts stuff is a pain to set up and is extremely slow to use. Not to mention the buttons are about the size of three buttons that the widget used to have. Also there is a significant delay in how the lights respond to the commands from the app. Even the placing of the scenes within every room is unnecessarily and annoyingly different. Any UX/UI professional would know that scrolling up and down is much more natural and convenient than to scroll side to side. I seriously do not see why the entire app needed to go through such a big revamp when what was already there was working beautifully. I really, really, REALLY hope that the widgets come back soon. If any of the developers is reading this please conduct some research/survey into what the users want.

New Version Makes Room Control Very Difficult. The new app design makes it very difficult to adjust the brightness of multiple lights in a room quickly. Old version had a slider bar for each light all in one place. In the new version, you have to click each light individually, then click brightness to open the slider bar, then adjust it, and then exit out before you can adjust the next light. What used to take 1 step now takes 4 steps. This is hugely inefficient. Also, they got rid of the ability to set all lights in one room to one color at once. Now you have to adjust each light individually. This is a HORRIBLE version and I would give it negative 10 stars if I could. I had been contemplating buying hue lights for the house my wife and I just bought ( and haven’t moved into yet) but now there is no way I’m buying more Phillips products if this is the app I would have to use to control my lights. Dear developers, please fix these critical issues!

It’s a significant downgrade in product usability. - Adjusting brightness is now cumbersome. A vertical slider that expands on interaction entirely unnecessary. There was nothing wrong with how it worked before. - Recently used colours is removed. This makes it impossible to duplicate an exact colour if you don’t save it as a theme. Now you’re forced to have dozens of themes that affect all lights just for one colour. The recent colour feature was useful for targeting just one light. - Lights will lock into a group on the colour wheel and can be difficult to separate. - UI lag is atrocious. Especially when opening the app. This is by far the worst aspect of the redesign. I’ve put up with it for months and now look for alternative apps. - The widgets feature was improved upon in regards but is now unreliable. Ironically. Coming home, the phone connects to WiFi before I’ve even got in the house. I tap the widget to turn the lights on once in the house. Unfortunately, 80% of the time I get an error saying it can’t turn the lights on. I have to open the app and wait about 5 seconds for it to find the bridge. Then it works. This was never an issue before the update. This update was focused on aesthetics over usability and experience. Toss in the obvious coding issues and you have a laggy, unfriendly app. A total downgrade. Completely disappointed.

Hue is Truly Legendary!. I honestly did not know what to expect when I started to explore Hue products in my home. Let me just say I am now OBSESSED!!! Being able to easily set up automation for when I go to and from my place, a wake up sequence, being able to set the mood for hosting friends or to put on a horror movie….its amazing!! Even the sync feature for my music or what I’m watching…lets just say I went from having a few lightbulbs to now outfitting my entire living room and bedroom with hue. The app makes the set up and user experience pretty seamless. My only feedback is thinking of some type of recovery sequence when an internet router is replaced…having to set up everything from the beginning and resetting a bridge can be a tad bit tedious.

New Versions Adds Too Many Steps to Disable Motion Sensor. The new version adds too many steps to an already long process to switch off a motion sensor. Something our family has to do daily to stop the labs formula that allows you to use a morning, evening and night period (an invaluable addition) from overpowering any manual change we do the second motion is detected. Also I’m about to max out with 2 hue bridges in our house. Having to constantly click through countless screens to switch between bridges is a daily pain point. I don’t mind having to buy more bridges but fix the app UI so I can control everything together. You keep releasing more and more products to add when your app can’t even support a basic amount without constantly switching between bridges. Pause product development on new things until you can make a bridge/app that can properly control that many devices.

Was 5 Stars Until the New Update. Before this update, if I wanted to turn on all lights in my house to a specific scene, I could just swipe right on my iOS Home Screen and touch the scene I wanted my house to use. I could turn off all lights the same way. Now, I have to go through a convoluted process to make a shortcut to turn on or off all lights. I can’t choose scenes for those lights. I can’t adjust individual light brightness within a room with a list of sliders like I used to for setting a scene. The new update actually reduces functionality and it seems a lot to me like Philips offloaded a portion of their budget to Apple’s crap HomeKit to save money. Fix it. Otherwise people aren’t going to spend $50 per bulb anymore. We pay a premium for Hue bulbs mostly for the ecosystem via the app. If Philips is going to cut costs this way, consumers will just respond by buying the cheap Chinese knock-offs. No incentive to pay more if the experience is garbage regardless of price point.

So disappointed…. The 4.0 update was a huge step backward in so many areas; I don’t even know where to begin… Functionality- Key features were removed, like the ability to set the color/warmth of a whole room/zone at once; now it seems your only option is to create a scene for every color…. Also really sad the widget is gone! It was my #1 favorite feature of the app (though I realize I might be a minority here). Performance- Each View to View transition has noticeable jank/stutter when launching for the first time; same for the initial scroll of lists. (Understandable on older devices, maybe, but on my 12 Pro Max???) Design- So many gradients and drop shadows!! I don’t know if this is a rebellion against the current trend of flat design (like google’s “material”) but it looks like a website from 2009… The horizontally scrolling lists for scenes and lights on the room/zone detail views are also baffling- I have 11 lights in a zone, but can only see 3.5 of them at a time, and there’s an entire row’s worth of dead space below them. Why not vertically scroll here? All in all, I’m sad; not sure what drove the ground-up rewrite, but having been in that situation myself as a developer I know there’s no going back now. I suppose it’s time to look at what the marketplace has to offer for third party options; maybe I’ll check back in a year when you’ve got all the kinks worked out.

Love hue 4 years strong. I don’t know what you guys did overnight but I can now pair my bridge thank you so much!!! Anyone having bridge paring issues I’d suggest going back and trying again. After 4 days of finely found it in the app again and super fast. I’ve never really had an issue with Philips hue this is probably the first big issue I’ve ever had in the four years of owning their lights and plugs. It was definitely a frustrating issue considering I’m extremely tech inclined and smart. I’m just glad it’s fixed if the stability stays that I’ve always had from hue I will update my review to 5 stars. I’ll come back in a few months. Overall I appreciate you guys getting it fixed and the products and services have always been 100% from Philips hue. Plz fix this ASAP can’t find bridge on app. All 17 of my lights & 4 plugs I can’t use. I have so much invested.

Worth it. My friends asked why I’d spend so much on lightbulbs… well, they aren’t cheap so they had a point. There are a lot of less expensive alternatives on the market - which I own and they serve their purpose. I use the less expensive lights to add light to less important (or less dynamic) areas of the house - like the stairway or my workbench where static behavior is fine. However, I like myself some Michigan State football so I needed some higher quality lighting (yes the light output is better on the philips). Not only that, Philips Hue app has more features than any other brand. Also a lot more responsive and reliable. Not only that, the app made it easy to find the information I needed to tap into the Hue API to add some more fun when we score. Again, they serve their purpose and the app helps really make them shine above the others.

Love the Redesign. I appreciate Phillips putting more attention into the app these past couple of years. You can tell a lot of care has been invested into the redesign. The scenes being refreshed often is a welcome change too. I think the Hue Labs section still needs to be redesigned though. As a developer, I would honestly consider removing the feature and making it its app. Hue Labs has a lot of heavy I/O with the Bridge, and it also requires a lot of interaction from the user (creating, modifying, and starting routines). Given that, it’s really strange to see it buried in a subsection of the Hue app. I could tell it wasn’t as optimized as the rest of the Hue app interface, so for all of those reasons, it deserves its own app. It’d be good for the Hue Labs community and make the features more accessible to casual users.

Apple’s recent iOS update ruined HUE. Apparently, because of apple’s recent update, widgets are no longer able to be used without the app being open itself, so the quick convenience we’ve known for years, our comfortable familiarity, is similar to when apple forced users to use their maps, and now you’re forced to use the shortcuts to create the basic features we’ve learned to love. Apple’s Shortcuts isn’t intuitive, it isn’t comfortable, and it’s completely ruined the ease and familiarity of a wonderful feature that Phillips had created for us. Had I not replaced every bulb in my home with smart bulbs, I probably wouldn’t have even noticed or cared, but now I’ve found Apple, and it’s continuous assault against logic and user-friendly services has forced HUE to use a model in shortcuts that pales in comparison to what we had prior. What a disappointment apple, to ruin the simplicity of a great product… again.

Problem with IPhone and keychain solved. About 2 weeks ago I posted a review here that the iPhone was requiring keychain and keychain required 2 factor authentication which I did not want to use. The developers reached out to me and helped problem solve the issue. I am happy to report the app is now connecting and the iPhone is fine with this - no longer requesting keychain. FYI- there was a setting in the Hue app under the iPhone controls settings to allow Hue to connect to the local network which had gotten turned off, I’m not sure how that happened but the developers were on top of it and figured this out. I was going to update my previous review but I didn’t see a way to do that so I am writing a new one. Definitely 5 stars! Thanks for the help! We love these colorful bulbs!

Great if you have less than 50 devices total. I o the other hand have: Bridges 3 Accessories 32 Lights & Plugs 141 I know i’m not your typical end customer, in that I am pushing the limits of the Hue architecture. I’m finding it really difficult to all manage my devices the way I want to be able to and the way Philips markets the products. Here is a rough inventory: Bridges (3), Accessories (32), and Lights & Plugs (141). I recently had to move many lights and accessories among my bridges because of memory issues (inability to program any new routines). Now that I have solved that pain, I have a new one. All voice assistance uses (1) Philips hue account and (1) bridge, means I cannot use Alexa to control devices on my other bridges. So I can only manage them via the app. Also, having to select a bridge before controlling devices is real also a pain. This architectural limitation also limits my availability to have automations that control all devices. I have to create the separate authorizations on each hub to achieve what should be a simple task. If I decide to change an automaton, I have to do it on all three. Can’t claim easy of use. This architectural limitation is only going to get worse as more devices are added. I do have iConnectHue app which helps, but is still not ideal and that doesn’t solve my “voice assistance” (Alexa, Google Home, Etc.) issue. Do you know of a work around and when Philips intends to address this major limitation.

App is buggy and frustrating - 2 main reasons. 1.) With this version: When I set a scene in one room, the living room for example, the app sets that same scene for the entire house. 2.) Since I’ve owned Hue lights/all versions of the app: Countless times I have tried to turn OFF the setting where the lights turn on to 100% white when I’m coming home (by location) - I have never turned that setting ON and it’s not on now by the way. Yet every time I come home the living room lights are on 100% and white. I have even experimented with leaving the lights on and at different colors when I leave. Same thing - when I come home they are on 100% and white. When I come home after work it’s bright and sunny so this isn’t a setting for sunrise/sunset - which I also haven’t turned on. This is very frustrating. The bugs in this app paint a picture of a neglectful lack of care about the customers or the entire product which includes the app, not just the fantastic bulbs. We have all paid a pretty penny to own these lights and deserve a better version of the app.

Easily the best smart bulbs. The functionality you get from a simple Phillips hue lightbulb is truly something to marvel at, I’ve tested a lot of smart homes over the years and I’ve always found myself sticking to HomeKit as I’ve had to heavily invest into Apple for work and let me tell you, buy these. If you love your smart home build it on a solid foundation of Phillips Hue bulbs, these things are so cool that when I put on music for guests during a party I uploaded album art as photos for the lights to create scenes around them and I don’t think I’ve quite seen grown adults fawn over lightbulbs in quite the same way before. Thanks to the engineers and app developers at Phillips, you folks have created an incredible product that in my opinion, sets the industry standard to live up to.

Worth the price. I use this app daily, and I consider it very worthwhile as far as the investment required to get started. The app is super simple, easy to work with, and it literally brightens up your space. Took about a year to get together all the various bulbs that I really wanted but it works fantastically from my iPhone while at home and remotely. I have 2 complaints: the iPad app is super laggy for some reason. It works so well on the phone, and that becomes very frustrating when you touch something and there’s no response so you touch again and it touches twice or on a whole menu that opened while you were lagging. Second complaint is that the iwatch app is straight trash. Just remove it from the device, it never connects! The rest works so well I would give it 5 stars but I actually just came to rant about the iPad app. Why is it so laggy!?!

Loving my hue!!!. I first became aware of hue lighting years ago. I remember passing by a commercial building downtown where I live. And I always during the holidays they would change the colors of the lighting in the buildings on each floor. I was amazed and I always wondered how they could do that. I later read an article about how the company Phillips what is the company that was making the bulbs that provided the look. Imagine how excited I was when I first seen them go on sale in my local supply shop. I have so many in my home now that I wouldn’t know how to live without them. I especially like it while we are having family night watching movies or during the holidays the atmosphere that it gives you is like no other! Thank you Phillips for coming up with such an amazing and reliable product!!!

Phillips Hue is SIMPLY THE BEST!!. We purchased our first Hue product back in 2017 and since, we’ve single-handedly outfitted our entire home with them. The app is simple to use, intuitive, and has a myriad of features (especially when connected to the bridge)- out of home control being one that we use regularly. The lights (and products themselves) are bit steep in terms of price but, customer service and support is outstanding, and they last a long time. Many of our lights from 2017, we still have to this day! We moved in 2022 to a townhome with a rooftop and have outfitted it with many of the outdoor products which are stellar. It’s always a treat to have people over to our house and have the Hue lights set the scene in a powerful way. I’d highlight recommend with the caveat on price-point: These aren’t cheap BUT, they are worth the investment.

14 years of amazing vibes. I’ve been using this app since I graduated college in 2007 and I’ve only had to replace three lights—in 14 years! My whole house uses Philips hue products so that’s extraordinary! I wouldn’t even consider a different product for lighting my house because the straight up ease of use is impossible compete with! Between the Siri/alexa/ok google support, the fairly clean user interface, and the compatibility with iOS and most importantly—the range of products…I dare you to find a better product! Motion sensors, switches, remotes, portable lights, countless types of bulb bases, light fixtures, lamps, outdoor products, and light strips…even options to match your lighting to your tv viewing exist to give you the most immersive lighting possible!

Reliable, but lagging behind.. I love my Hue lights, but between the astronomical cost of the lights/accessories and the lack of deeper functionality, I’m not surprised that they’re fading from popularity at this point. Other brands offer similar functionality for a fraction of the price. On top of that, these brands offer more diverse options for custom settings and animations. That being said, Phillips Hue lights are seemingly more sturdy and reliable than most other brands, but I’m not convinced that that’s super relevant given that 1 of the 5 lights I bought is already malfunctioning after only 2-3 years of normal use. Overall, I won’t be getting rid of mine anytime soon (especially after what I paid for them), but I do wish the premium price tag felt more justifiable. At the very least, I’d love to see a major overhaul of the app and customization options to catch up to their competitors in 2024. And I don’t know… maybe a price drop? Am I asking too much?

Amazing Lights, Horrible App Design. The title says it all. These lights are stellar, and they have the potential to be great, but the most recent app update is a huge step backwards. So for starters, it takes *much longer* for things to load, on top of all the jank and lag. I feel like I’ve been dragged back to the early 2010s when using the app. It is nowhere near as user-friendly or as smooth as one would expect from an app in 2021. Please for the love of god, have a talk with your design team and software developers, Philips. Edit: After a bit more poking around, it turns out they removed timers! What should be a simple thing to do in the app (which I frequently used to time things such as turning off my lights when I fell asleep) has now somehow vanished into the void. Seriously. Please fix this broken app. I *want* to keep using hue, but with this recent update I might have to switch fully to something much better like Nanoleaf or another smart light brand.

No idea how this app has good ratings. I’ll start by saying I don’t have a hue bridge. Just some bulbs. The bulbs were a pain to sync. The app wouldn’t detect or pair with them. I discovered the trick was to change to iPhone Bluetooth settings and back to the app, which seemed to help it refresh the Bluetooth devices it sees. Worked every time with that trick, but would just say “connecting…” forever otherwise. Finally the bulbs are connected, but now there’s no way to add zones/rooms. Seems like you only get that functionality with the hue bridge, which is kind of garbage. Why can I not group the bulbs by zone without the hue bridge? Beyond that, none of the documentation or videos line up with the latest interface and are all out of date. I know they won’t care, so I’m just leaving this review. Wish I hadn’t spent extra to get the highly rated bulbs given that the software is terrible. I’ll probably cave and get the hue bridge, but really shouldn’t have to just for basics like zones/rooms.

Terrible Updates. I used to like the app because it was at least functional. There were some gimmicky features added in a long the way, but with ease I could control lights however I wanted. With the most recent update, if a scene combines lights, you have to manually separate them. To separate them, they must be turned on. Now I have to turn on all lights in one room/scene, then turn off/unbind lights manually, all for the sake of turning on one color bulb. This update is terrible, I know it, you will know it, Phillips knew it when they released an update days later based on user feedback. They don’t know what their users or customers actually want and they never have. They came out with some cool lighting tech almost 10 years ago, made few hardware changes and no improvements to software. And that’s where we are today. I wish you could read this prior to your purchase, but chances are you’re here because you’re setting up a new bridge and lights. Good luck!

Love!!!. We’ve had a house full of hue lights for 10 years. After a while they get into my rhythm. They turn themselves on and off and it’s like having my dad when I was little. Always saying, “who left the light on”. Recently we did some remodeling and the bathrooms got 36 inch round mirror set in a bracket with spools of thread to hold it at the right distance. It looks great. Everyone wants one and we saved so much money doing it ourselves. My son came along and I asked him to set the auto sequence. At first I was annoyed because he could see the light blue walls, so why did he make it pink. Then a few minutes later it went back to blue. He set it up to say good morning. I see you. And I love you. In lights every morning. Thanks for being a part of us Hue. Even if the lights in my son’s bathroom turned off when I was in the middle of my shower. Oh and as our system aged, it was harder to get the right power cords and plugs. If you are going to change the engineering, support it. Don’t make me look on eBay!!! I love my globe on the back porch. I love to teach the kids how to make it any color their finger gets to. I have an ap for a thunder storm and it makes the kitchen cabinets turn on like florescent bulbs how they kind of bounce. These things bring me joy because I am comforted by light. Leave the light on!!

Very awesome light. I enjoy this bulb as I have one in my living room and one in my son’s nursery. I love the fact that you can dim the bulbs through the app or even through Alexa. All very positive things to say and discover with this. You can set up different rooms, dim individual lights (through app) and even set up home-and-away lighting! However user friendly this try’s to be, any smart home will have bugs... I’ve tried out a few of the other smart lights on the market.. and... well, I didn’t feel so smart trying to set them up. The Hue app itself is a bit touchy (at least mine is, and no I don’t update all that often, so that probably my problem) it has a hard time getting out of the “connecting” step. So I’m trouble shooting the old fashion way. Remove and Reinstall. I can’t really give you a list of cons, as I am quite happy with this device and its functions. I have even looked at picking up more lights and bridges to better suit my two rooms. All I can say is try it for yourself, and realize this is still a work in progress in the long run. The developers are doing great things, and are always patching, updating, and improving this product as generations come out. (Thanks guys and gals) So overall 5/5 because there is honestly nothing wrong with the lights and the app is still a loving work in development. 😊

7.5 Stars out of 5. I love everything about this app, it’s interface, ease of use, modern/sleek/easy on the eyes ~ customizable to my 21 Hue Lights and growing collection. The fireplace effect as well as consistent updates to the app, including the recently-added auto-dynamic mode just allows you to tell Siri or Alexa what to change the lights to in which room and brightness level, the app just makes it easy to make it so easy. When I leave the house the lights turn off and when I return home it’s my favorite light color scheme and brightness. The Phillips Hue brand and team come out with newer versions of their selection of styles between bulbs and strips and GO lights with TV accent panels. I started my collection in 2017. My home, anywhere I make it, through the use of this app, is only getting better, with time.