How to control Philips Hue lights remotely when away from home
Although not enabled by default, you can quickly and easily set up your Philips Hue smart lighting system to control your lights when away from home. You can set up this feature to control every bulb or light strip, just as you would at home when no longer connected to your Wi-Fi network. When you've enabled this ability, you can check on the status of your lights, switch off any you left on by mistake, and turn them back on as you arrive home at night.
First, you need to go to account.meethue.com and create a user account, if you do not already have one.
Next, go to the Hue smartphone app, open and launch this, and then tap on the Settings button in the lower-right corner. You will see the phrase, "Out of home control" printed at the top of the next screen in white, with the word 'Disabled' written below it in smaller type.
Tap there, then tap on the green Enable button. This will open a web browser within the Hue app and take you to the company's account login page. Tap 'Yes' when asked if you trust the app, then log in using the username and password of the account you created in step one.
That's all that you need to do to get this started. The word 'Enabled' will now be displayed in green at the foot of the screen, on the 'Out of home control' button.
To test that everything is working correctly—which we suggest that you do—start by switching off your smartphone's Wi-Fi connection. Then, take note of how, when you reopen the Hue app, it briefly says 'Connecting' at the foot of the screen before an orange notification box appears to say you are connected to your Hue system via the cloud. That's what you'll want to see.
For us, this final step initially failed, and we were told the app was not connected to our Hue system via the cloud. That's not a problem. If this happens to you, start by closing the app. Then, re-launch the app and look at the foot of the screen again. When we took these steps, we immediately saw that we were connected.
When you're connected to the Hue app via the cloud, you have the same functionality as when connected via Wi-Fi at home. This will allow you to set every Hue light to any setting the app normally allows, customize the lights to your preferences, adjust your daily lighting routines, and change other settings.
Read More:
- Philips Go Hue review: A smart Bluetooth light to take on the road
- Philips Hue Smart Button puts a portable light switch anywhere in your home
- The smart home of 2024: What to upgrade and what to keep another year
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