Want to quickly control your Hue lights? You do not have to select up your telephone or yell across the room at Alexa, Google Assistant, or Siri. Right here are some easy means to manage your Hue lights correct from your Mac.
We’ll go over a number of answers in this article: The developed-in smarthome features in macOS and a effortless 3rd-celebration utility for controlling Hue lights from your Mac’s menu bar.
Possibility 1: Use the Home Application
Your Mac has a model of the exact same “Home” application you can use on Apple iphone and iPad. It can management all your HomeKit-enabled smarthome products.
To open up it, press Command+House to open up Highlight look for, type “Home,” and launch the Home app. Your Hue lights will seem in this article if you have presently established up the integration to handle them with Siri on Apple iphone or iPad.
To change Hue lights on and off, simply click their tiles. For more possibilities, ideal-click or Ctrl-click one particular of the tiles here and pick “Show Controls.”
This window delivers an simple way to turn lights on and off, opt for brightness stages, and transform their shade. However, it is not as fully showcased as the Hue app by itself.
(If you have not established up the Hue integration however, open the Hue application on your Iphone or iPad and head to Options > HomeKit & Siri.)
Option 2: Converse to Siri
Assuming you’ve currently set up the HomeKit integration, you do not even have to have to open the Property app. You can management your Hue lights from your Mac with Siri just like you would from an Iphone or iPad.
To use this, possibly simply click the SIri icon at the major suitable corner of your Mac’s menu bar or press and keep Command+Area. Speak into your Mac’s microphone and say a command like “Turn off the lights” or “Turn on [a specific light]”—any Siri command for turning lights on and off, altering brightness, or changing shades will operate on your Mac just like they do on an Apple iphone or iPad.
You can variety out commands for Siri on a Mac, much too.
Linked: How to Kind Out Voice Instructions for Siri
Choice 3: Install Colors for Hue
Ok, the built-in functions on a Mac are terrific, but they seriously aren’t fantastic. Would not it be great to manage your Hue lights from your Mac’s menu bar with just your mouse and have accessibility to all the shade solutions Hue delivers?
Hues for Hue, a no cost app obtainable in the Mac Application Retail outlet, provides all these options. The app has in-application purchases, but only for donations if you sense like supporting the developer—you can use everything in the application for absolutely free with no advertisements.
As soon as mounted, start the Hues for Hue app. The initial time you use it, you will have to hook up to your Hue Bridge. Use the “Connect” tab in the app’s settings window to scan for the Hue Bridge on your network.
You can also manually enter your Hue Bridge’s IP address. (You can uncover this facts from within the Hue app. Head to Settings > Hue Bridges and faucet the “i” to the correct of the bridge’s title.)
Just can’t see the “Scan by IP” box? We ran into an odd bug with that—to expose it, click on the “Support Us” icon at the major of the window and then click the “Connect” icon when yet again.
Press the button on your Hue Bridge when prompted to finish the relationship procedure.
You now have a gentle bulb icon on your Mac’s menu bar. Click on it for straightforward accessibility to your Hue lights: You can change them on, change them off, modify brightness, alter hues, and even use a “Delayed Off” attribute to have a light-weight routinely flip off following a certain period of time.
You can use the Colours for Hue choices window (simply click “Preferences” in the menu) to rearrange the listing of lights and set up groups. Click the “Lights” tab to obtain these possibilities.
That’s it—you’ll continue to have to use the Hue app for quite a few options like including new lights and environment up routines, but Hues for Hue provides rapid access to regular controls you’ll need.