Philips Hue is arguably the biggest name in the smart lighting business. The company produces a huge range of smart lights, includingindividual lightbulbsandexterior floodlights. Those products are usually excellent, though they often carry price tags to match.
Philips Hue makes it easy to add multiple lights to your set up, and control them all through its mobile app. You can group lights into rooms and zones that you can control all at once or control each individual light separately if you prefer.
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It’s not the brand’s first outdoor light, but it is one of its most interesting.
However, the Philips Hue app isn’t the best smart home app I’ve ever used, and the design has remained unchangedfor several years, despite there being some obvious room for improvement.
The good news is that there’s finally a new interfacce available within the app. In fact, you probably already have access to that design right now without even realizing it. That’s because in order to use the new design, you need to activate it within the app, and it’s not that easy to find. Here’s how to activate the Philips Hue redesign.
Philips Hue
What is the Philips Hue redesign?
A new look that brings improvements
The Philips Hue app has looked the same for a long time, and even if you update to the latest version of the app, it will stick look the same as it has for years. However, hidden away is a setting that will let you use a newly updated interface that makes the app more user-friendly.
The new design isn’t anything ground-breaking. The majority of the app still looks the same as it ever did. However, there are some changes that some users may find useful, particularly those with a large number ofrooms and zonesset up in their Hue app.
The new design isn’t available by default; if you want to use it, you’ll need to manually activate it. The setting is hidden, so many users may be completely unaware that there is an alternate design available. Thankfully, you’re reading this article, so you get to give the new design a try.
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How to activate the Philips Hue redesign
The new design option is well-hidden
As mentioned, Philips Hue doesn’t make it easy for you to activate the new design. If you don’t know where to look, it’s unlikely that you’d stumble across it when using the app. The good news is, you only need to activate it once, and then your app will stay in the new design unless you decide to change it back again. Even if you close out of the app, it will remember your preference the next time that you open it.
How to use the Philips Hue redesign
The new design is familiar but better
The most obvious thing about the new design is that the tiles are much smaller. Where previously each tile would be the full width of the screen, the tiles are now small enough to fit two across. This means you can see more tiles at the same time, without the need as much scrolling. The tiles are slightly taller, but it still means that on myiPhone 15 Pro, I can see six tiles on a single screen, rather than four.
Another big change is in the way you control the brightness of rooms or zones. In the standard layout, each tile has a brightness slider at the bottom of the tile that can be adjusted to change the brightness of the lights within that room or zone.
This slider doesn’t appear on tiles in the new design. Instead, you tap and hold on a tile to see the current brightness. You can then slide your finger up or down to change the brightness of the lights within that room or zone. It’s less intuitive than the original design, but once you know how it works, it’s simple to use.
However, just like with the old design, you can’t change the brightness of a room or zone if it’s turned off. If you tap and hold a room when it’s toggled off, instead of seeing the current brightness, the tile simply shakes, and you get some haptic feedback that indicates that what you’re trying isn’t possible. It would be nice if it were possible to simply increase the brightness from zero, rather than having to turn a room on, and then change the brightness.
Otherwise, navigating around the app remains similar; the menus at the bottom of the screen are still the same, and tapping on a room or zone will bring up all theindividual lightswithin that area, just as before. It’s certainly not ground-breaking, but it’s definitely an improvement and makes it a little easier to get a visual snapshot of the current state of the lights in your home.
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How to return to the original Philips Hue design
You can go back to the old look if you prefer
If you decide that you prefer the original design after all, then you may always go back to it. If you don’t have manysmart lights, for example, then the extra real estate provided by the smaller tiles in the new design isn’t a huge benefit. You might prefer the more intuitive brightness slider over having to tap and hold a tile to change the brightness. You can switch back and forth between the designs as you wish.
