Hue’s Latest Update Makes The App Finally Worth Using

iOS/Android: Philips has released a major update to its Hue app that actually makes it worth using. And I’m not being over the top when I say that; prior to this update, the Hue app was a mess. It felt like it took forever to load; the user interface was challenging, to put it nicely; and it made me set off on a hunt for the best third-party apps I could use to control my fancy Hue lights without the headache and stress of the official Hue app.

Screenshot: David Murphy

With Hue version 3.0, out now for iOS and Android, Philips finally seems willing to craft a decent user experience around smart lights. While the app still has a little way to go to be incredible, it’s actually usable now, and I’ll give the company all the credit it’s due for that.

Faster loading times

I’ve kept Philips’ Hue app on my iPhone ever since I bought my first smart bulb, checking back on the app from time to time to see if Philips made any improvements to its functionality. Right from the start, I love that this latest version of Hue loads quickly.

It always felt like the older versions of the app had a bit of a delay before the app popped up, which got annoying and always made me want to turn to widgets or smart assistants whenever I wanted to flip my lights to a different colour.

(Slightly) smarter interface

Like before, you can turn rooms’ worth of lights on and off from the app’s primary screen – or just adjust the brightness of your lights up and down. Though this isn’t indicated in the app, you can now tap-and-hold a room’s icon to pull up a quick-selection window.

Here, you can pick from one of your four most recently used scenes, or you can get a little dexterous and select a brand-new colour temperature (for white) or a different colour entirely.

This little trick, combined with the app’s faster loading times, makes it incredibly easy to change your lights at a moment’s notice. And I love it.

More scenes to pick from

Tap on a room, and you’ll see all of the scenes you’ve created in a smaller, easier-to-navigate grid (a big improvement over the huge, bulky circles the app previously provided).

The same colour-wheel controls from before are also present, giving you yet another way to transform a room’s colours into anything you want (by either setting all its lights to one colour, or placing different lights at different points on a colour or warmth wheel). Whenever you separate out or combine lights, the app vibrates to let you know you’ve done something – a nice touch.

Tap to make a new scene, and then tap on the camera icon at the bottom, and you’ll be able to pick from a number of new preset scenes (30 in total). They’re lovely, though I wish they lived on the section of the app where you can tap on scenes you’ve created, as it’d save you a bit of digging to find them.

Like previous versions of the Hue app, you can also have the app create a scene from the colours of any photo you’ve taken if you want your room to look like, say, a giant Pusheen the Cat.

Hue’s tap-and-hold trick works on individual lights, too

If you head on back to the main “room view” – for lack of a better way to describe it – you can tap on what looks like a bulleted list to pull up all the individual lights you’ve set up for that room. You can then tap-and-hold on each light to bring up the same quick-selection menu as before, which makes it a lot faster to customise your lights any way you want.

Above all else, I’m most impressed with this and the aforementioned colour wheel/warmth wheel selections. No matter how you go about it, it won’t take you any time at all to set up a custom lighting configuration within the Hue app, which will make it a lot easier get the mood lighting going for your next party or Tiny Desk Concert.

What’s next?

I think Philips ran out of paint before it got to the Routines, Explore or Settings tabs of its app, as those appear unchanged from the app’s prior versions. I’ll be curious to see if Hue tackles them – as well as the app’s somewhat-fussy “Are you logged in? You were logged in. So, now you’re not logged in” approach. (Hue sometimes gives me grief when I’m trying to remotely manage my lights or install one of its “lab experiments”.)

I’m also looking forward to the day when the Hue app also allows me to set animations for lights. I want to make my room look like a flickering fireplace, a thunderstorm or a (glowing) inanimate carbon rod. It’s time, Philips. I’ve mastered static scenes; let me design a light show.

My personal wish list aside, you have absolutely no reason to not grab the updated Hue app if you’re a regular light turner-oner or turner-offer. And if Philips’ past annoyances with Hue have turned you off from the app for good, I recommend extending the olive branch and checking out this latest version. Here’s hoping it doesn’t take Philips years to drum up some new features for version 4.0.