Hue Lights - v4.0 Release Notes

Advanced control for your Hue Personal Wireless Lighting System

Hue Lights brings you the perfect marriage of hardware and software. Get the most out of your Philips Hue System with fast widget support, shared Scenes and Groups, comprehensive scheduling, customized sequences, Apple Watch support, powerful light controls, and remote control. Hue Lights offers excellent support for the latest Philips hardware including Hue motion sensor, Hue dimmer switch, and Hue Tap. Create multiple time intervals for motion and non-motion events. Control separate Hue dimmer switch buttons using long-press and short-press actions. Scene details, schedules, motion sensor time intervals, and switch details are stored directly on your bridge for easy sharing with other devices on your WiFi network.

Enjoy spectacular choreographed audio/visual background animations and sequences! Bring your Hue Lights to a whole new level with multi-track, synchronized, and visually appealing light animations. The "Hue Lights" third-party app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch gives you fast, accurate, and complete control of your Hue Personal Wireless Lighting System. Create personalized categories, scenes, and favorites. Access frequently used lighting scenes with just one tap. Set up your favorite colors with precise control over all possible light attributes. Apply favorites to lights, scenes, and groups for quick set-up and changes.

What's New in Hue Lights v4.0?

Discover a fresh set of features and updated navigation controls with Hue Lights v4.0! Create multiple timers that trigger special effects. Timers for groups and lights are stored directly on your Philips Hue bridge, so they can run with your iPhone powered off. Customize the quick color picker with your favorite colors. Large navigation controls show the status of all lights and groups. Quickly change control screens using the new tab bars at the bottom of the screen. Works great in portrait and landscape orientations.

The optional Premium Actions in-app purchase offers several effects for individual lights and groups. Effects include sunset, holiday, police, salmon run, calm, club, harvest, galaxy, unwind, and blink.

New Features

• New navigation controls
• Quick color picker for lights and groups
• Customize color presets
• Apply dynamic effects to individual lights and groups
• Create multiple light and group timers
• Updated remote access authentication
• Added support for many new Apple Watch faces
• Fixed time display when adding schedules
• Fixed a problem when saving some duplicated sequences
• Updated multiple screen layouts
• Improved light and accessory search

Recent Features

• Sampler pack with 42 light formulas
• Apply scene themes to any group
• Group detail screen shows individual light color states
• Scene identifiers can be copied to the clipboard
• Support for new Hue dimmer switch
• Fixed issue when suspending/resuming motion sensors
• Create arbitrary time intervals for the Hue Smart button
• Schedule individual lights
• Control individual lights from Apple Watch
• Larger buttons on Apple Watch
• Improved visual feedback for On/Off buttons
• Lights can be added to bridge with serial numbers
• Updates for iOS 14.4
• Fixed issues when switching bridges
• Added support for new device types
• Launch Hue Lights from Apple Watch Complication
• Control 200 scenes
• Control 64 groups
• Scenes have larger On/Off buttons
• Animated feedback when controlling a scene
• Group colors change instantly
• Create recurring schedules for the All Lights group
• Duplicate any sequence
• Updated sequence defaults
• Added support for Philips Hue Play
• Fixed issue when deleting lights from effects
• Fixed cache synchronization problem with group schedules
• Enhanced schedule options for groups and scenes
• Maximum brightness in Perfect Sunrise effect is configurable
• Configurations for thunderstorm, fire and water are saved between restarts
• Improved configuration table visualizations
• Added support for latest Hue Go model
• Added support for Hue Outdoor LightStrips
• Added support for Hue Aurella panels
• Added support for Trådfri light
• Fixed issue when deleting lights
• Fixed sequence display when using only one light
• Scenes can use colorloop and alert effects
• Scene colorloop effect works with Widget and Apple Watch
• Improved brightness visualizations
• Bug fixes and performance improvements
• Bridge discovery enhancements; find all bridge models (V1 and V2)
• New bridge communication software for firmware 1935074050
• Faster switching between Philips Hue bridges
• All off/on buttons control multiple bridges at the same time
• Added support for Hue smart plugs
• New images for Hue smart button
• Added volume controls to thunderstorm, fire and water effects
• Updated Hue bulb images for model LCT025
• Schedules show timers and recurring timers
• Improved Hue Tap configuration screen on iPad
• Philips Hue outdoor motion sensor support
• View and edit schedules from any source
• AirPlay option added to all effects that use audio
• Effects, sequences and animations keep running when using music apps
• Fixed synchronization issues when editing scenes and groups
• Added support for drifting bridge values
• Created new URL scheme for sensor control: huelights://sensors
• Shortened VoiceOver text

The Richer Colors and Scenes In-App purchase is recommended for Philips Hue bulbs. It includes 10 new scenes: Arctic Mist, Autumn, Big Sur, Coral Reef, Cornucopia, Glacier, Jordan Almonds, Lilac Garden, Pastel Valley, and Seaside. Tap Settings → Upgrade → Richer Colors and Scenes to purchase this In-App item. You can use this In-App purchase on all of your other iOS devices. Use the Restore Previous Purchases option on the new device to unlock all of your In-App purchases.

You can purchase various Philips Hue bulbs via these Amazon links. In-App purchase:

Alexa Tips

You can create precise scenes with the Hue Lights app that let you configure every possible value of each light attribute (hue, saturation, color temperature, brightness, on/off status). To make your Amazon Echo device recognize a custom Hue Lights scene follow these steps:

1. Create a User Defined Scene
2. Within the scene detail screen tap Scene Effects
3. Tap Room and assign a room from the ROOMS section
4. Save this scene on the bridge by tapping Share on Bridge
5. Launch the Amazon Alexa app and tap the 3 horizontal bars at the upper left of the screen
6. Tap Smart Home → Scenes → Discover Scenes
7. Your new scenes should show up once the search completes
8. If your scene is named Mars, activate it by saying Alexa, turn on Mars

If there are no rooms listed in step 3, then you should create a group with a Room group type. Rooms are currently required for correct Alexa operation. Once you save a Hue Lights scene on the bridge it will also be visible in the native Philips app.

Since a single scene can turn some lights on and other lights off you can trigger dramatic changes with a few words. The scenes created by the Hue Lights app store some information on the bridge and other information directly on the Hue bulbs. This makes it possible to have all bulbs react at the same time. Give it a try! If you have any questions, you can always contact support within the app.

Contact

Please send suggestions, questions or feedback to the support contact at https://huelights.com. If you are stuck on a particular issue, please check our FAQ for help.

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