One of the fantastic perks of Philips Hue lights is how many devices and apps can work with or enhance the functionality of them. The developer community is gigantic. One platform that’s a bit more sparse on Hue support is the Mac. Wouldn’t it be great if while already using your Mac, you didn’t need to reach over to your iPhone and launch an app to control the lights?
A few apps, most of which cost money, do exist for the Mac that can help out with this. But we’re going to focus on just one. It’s free and it has more features than even the official Philips Hue app for iOS supports.
HSwitch for Philips Hue is a menu-bar app that let you control your Philips Hue lightbulbs. You can turn On or Off any device, set color and dim your lightbulbs. You can also turn On or Off all devices by pressing a button. You can only control the devices on the same local network with your Mac. Best Hue app AND the dev is extremely responsive. I don’t normally write many reviews but I have to say this is the best Windows Hue app out there, it has a ton of features and no in app purchases to force you to pay more to get all the goodies. The developer is the fastest and most responsive developer I have came across on Windows. Philips Hue Mac App. The best Mac app for Philips Hue is the Colors for Hue. It’s free and it does nearly everything you could ask a Hue controller to do. Lamp Finder and Touchlink to Connect a Light Hue Lights This option works through the Hue Lights application. The Touchlink option is currently only built into an IOS application, if you have an droid device you will have to use Lamp Finder on a PC or MAC.
Philips Hue Mac App
The best Mac app for Philips Hue is the Colors for Hue. Why? It’s free and it does nearly everything you could ask a Hue controller to do.
First, you have to pair the app as always with your Hue bridge. Calendar todo app mac. Comic making software for mac. Launch Colors for Hue, then head over to wherever you put your bridge and press the center button to confirm the link.
Colors for Hue sits in your menu bar. If you click it, you’ll see a list of every light bulb connected to that bridge along with an indication of their current brightness level.
If you have Hue bulbs that support color, hovering over the name of your bulb will reveal an entire color palette to choose from. As for Hue bulbs that don’t support color, but just various color temperatures for white, you can adjust that here too using the slider. Since my bulbs are just pure white, I can only adjust the brightness from the main menu.
Grouping Lights
One the largest downsides to the official Philips Hue app is that it doesn’t support the grouping of several light bulbs into one control. Yes, you can set scenes that have brightness and color presets for all the light bulbs, but sometimes you just need a few grouped together.
For instance, my ceiling light is powered by three different lightbulbs. In the Philips Hue app, I’d have to control them either by turning on or off all the lights in the room (four for me total) or each lightbulb one by one.
Philips Hue Mac App
Thankfully, in Colors for Hue, I’ve been able to group the three ceiling bulbs into a single Ceiling light. To do this, click Preferences in the menu then click Groups. Highlight the bulbs you want to group together by pressing either Command or Shift.
Tip: It helps if you give your lights specific names that can aid you in remembering which ones they are within the room, rather than just keeping them in default numerical order.Click Group and you’re done. Now, the brightness slider in Colors for Hue controls all three bulbs on the ceiling at once.
Delayed Off
Colors for Hue also supports Delayed Off, which is basically a sleep timer for your lights. Hover over the light or group of lights you want to set a delay for, then in the secondary menu hover over Delayed Off. Choose which amount of time you want to keep the lights on for before they automatically shut off.
Tip: ![Philipps Hue Mac App Philipps Hue Mac App](/uploads/1/3/4/2/134260530/620465469.jpeg)
Philips Hue Sync App Pc
Colors for Hue is available from the Mac App Store.
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The Philips Hue app does not let you set color temperature by Kelvin number. You set it by sliding a marker to different color positions, but not by the Kelvin number.
The reason it’s helpful to set the precise Kelvin number is the Philips Ambiance bulbs vary brightness by temperature. For my BR30 White Ambiance bulbs, the brightest temperature is 4,000 Kelvin (680 lumens, which is supposedly equivalent to an 85 watt incandescent bulb). 4,000 Kelvin is cool-white.
Philips doesn’t give a chart of lumens at every temperature, but they indicate that you can get 600 lumens at 3,000 Kelvin, which is supposedly equivalent to a 75 watt incandescent bulb. 3,000 Kelvin is warm-white.
There is a third party app called Hue Pro, which lets you choose a desired Kelvin number via a slider. The app costs $2 in the Google Play store. Once the temperature is set, it can be saved as a preset “scene” in the regular Hue app. The Hue Pro app does a number of other things, but none are as interesting to me as setting the Kelvin number.
Philips bulbs are not bright, but at least I’ve set them as bright as they can be.