Philips Hue 4+

Isn’t it funny how people rate an app 1 or 2 stars because it either doesn’t do what they want it to do or they can’t figure out how it works? Is my kettle useless because it doesn’t make me cheese on toast? No, it’s designed to boil my water and it does just that. The Philips hue app is very easy to set up with your bridge and adding bulbs to it is very simple. Once everything is set up simply synchronise with Apple HomeKit. It’s important to understand that Apple HomeKit takes its settings from the Philips hue app so do all your rooms and setting from there first. Setting up rooms and adding lights to those rooms is simple. Light settings are remembered fine, like dim levels and auto updates are easily turned off is desired. I really don’t know how people are struggling with this app when it actually does everything it was designed to do with a simple and easy to use interface. I’ve only knocked off 1 star because I can’t see a way of grouping several spot lights together in to a group but I’m sure this will follow soon in an update. Don’t be put off by the negative reviews. I’ve not had a single issue with this app.

I’ve been using Hue lighting for several years and this app has had its ups and downs but it’s now a very polished and fully rounded control system. I felt compelled to leave this review for all the people moaning about the loss of support for widgets. I myself was one of them until I took the time to investigate why they had done this. They now support shortcuts, which in my opinion was definitely the way to go. You can add shortcuts to your phone just like any other widget but the flexibility and customisation of shortcuts is far superior to the limitations of pre built widgets. Just look in the settings section of the app and under widgets you get a guide to using the shortcut app. My only complaint with hue is the limit on the number of bulbs/accessories per bridge and the disjointed way multiple bridges are supported. Come on Hue fix these issues that have been ongoing for years… 5 stars for the app though!

So here’s the issue. Suddenly this week every time my Hue bulb is switched off it disconnects from the HueBT app it has worked beautifully on for years.
Naturally the first thing I did was try to update it and the app. The app appeared to be no longer available. It will reconnect to this app everyday after about five attempts and 10 minutes of wasted time each morning.
So I downloaded the Hue app, it was very helpful and the first thing it wanted to transfer my light from HueBT. Great I thought. It gives me one option which is to click to upgrade HueBT and then when I click it, it takes me to my apple App Store. There I am met with a box that flashes up telling me the HueBT app does not exist. So I’m stumped. The Hue app has no other options. The HueBT app still works if I’m prepared to lose ten minutes every morning or I have no other choice but to replace the bulb with a less “smart” option which might actually be the smart option.
Or I gamble and delete the HueBT app entirely and hope this sorts the situation with the Hue app. What would you do?
The other issue is we have just bought another bulb just last week. Not sure whether to open it or return it after this. Again, I think the smart option would be the latter.