How to connect Philips Hue lights with Apple HomeKit and Siri

Controlling smart lighting with your voice is one of the most useful features of a smart home. Saying “Hey Siri, turn off the lights” from the comfort of your bed or couch without having to get up or pull out your phone is truly a great experience. And if you’ve got some Philips Hue smart bulbs and an iPhone, it’s really easy to connect them to Apple’s HomeKit smart home platform so Apple’s voice assistant, Siri, can work for you.

This setup also allows you to sync your smart lights with other connected devices in your home. This lets you create automations that do things like turning on your lights and starting your music in the morning when a motion sensor is triggered, or setting a Movie Time scene that adjusts your lights, cranks up the smart thermostat, and your door locked, cause.

Another benefit of connecting Apple HomeKit and Philips Hue is Apple’s adaptive lighting. This feature automatically adjusts the color temperature of your lighting based on the time of day. It sets you to cooler white light during the day to help you focus, and to a warmer light as the day draws to a close to help your internal clock adjust more naturally to nighttime.

How to connect your Philips Hue lights to Apple HomeKit.

Image: Philips Hue

Set up Philips Hue smart lights in the Apple Home app

To connect a Philips Hue smart lighting device with Apple HomeKit for voice control with Siri, you need a Hue Bridge and an Apple HomeKit device, such as a Apple HomeKit device. B. an iPhone, iPad, Apple TV or HomePod. If you want to set up automations, you’ll need an Apple Home Hub, which is a HomePod, Apple TV, or an iPad.

• Open the Philips Hue app on your iPhone or iPad.
• Go to settings > voice assistant > Siri and HomeKit.
• Beat couple bridge.
• Name your home and tap create at home.
• Scan the HomeKit code on the bottom of your Hue Bridge with your phone’s camera.
• Follow the instructions to connect your Hue lights.
• The Hue app and the Apple Home app should sync your rooms so any lights you have in rooms in the Hue app appear in the corresponding rooms in the Home app.
• If this doesn’t happen, tap settings button at the bottom of the Siri and HomeKit page in the Hue app and select Sync setup with HomeKit.

Once set up, you can use voice commands with Siri to turn your lights on or off and adjust the color and brightness. You can also add the lights to all HomeKit scenes and automations.

Set up Hue accessories in the Apple Home app

If you have a physical controller for your Hue lights, e.g. For example, a Philips Hue Smart Dimmer Switch, a Hue Smart Button or a Hue Tap Dial Switch, you can also pair them with Apple HomeKit. However, you can only configure these devices in one app. So once you’ve set them up in the Apple Home app, you can’t control them in the Hue app.

The main reason to add these to the Apple Home app is if you have other smart lights in your home that are also HomeKit compatible, such as. B. Smart Bulbs from Meross and Smart Switches from Lutron Caseta. Then you can program the Hue accessory switches to control those lights alongside your Hue lights using the Apple Home app.

To add your Philips Hue accessory switches to the Apple Home app:

• Open the Philips Hue app.
• Beat settings > Accesories and select the device you want to add to Apple Home.
• Beat Setup in Apple Home.
• A dialog box appears confirming that setting up the device in Apple Home will remove your current configuration.
• Beat Set up in Apple Home.
• The Hue app will automatically open the Apple Home app.
• In the Home app, tap the device icon.
• Configure it to control the HomeKit accessories you want.
• If you decide to go back to just using the Hue app, you can reset the device and set it up again in the Hue app.