How to Control your Philips Hue bulbs with your Apple Watch

Have you ever thought about setting up your Philips hue bulbs with your Apple watch? Doing this ensures that you can control your bulbs right from your wrist. Now, wouldn’t that be awesome? The good news is that it can be done.

Does Hue app work on Apple Watch?

With the launch of the updated Philips Hue 4.0 app, the popular widgets feature was removed, and Apple Watch has also been dropped. While support has currently stopped it is expected this support will return in the near future. 

While Hue don’t currently have the integration within their app, you can use third party apps that work with Apple watch.

Take a look at:

• iConnectHue
• Hue Essentials

Via these apps you can turn lights, bulbs and rooms on and off via your watch, as well as adjusting the color and brightness. 

How do I control Philips Hue with Apple Watch?

To proceed to start setting up your Philips Hue bulbs with your Apple watch.

Step 1

Start by opening the official Philips Hue app on your iOS device. Proceed to the settings tab and select Apple Watch & Widgets on the side menu. Navigating to this section is quite simple that to the user-friendly Phillips Hue app.

It would help if you then tapped on the different scenes that you need to appear on your Apple watch. Understand that the order of the scenes on your Apple watch will be determined by the order in which you select them. This means that you need to take a lot of consideration when clicking on the scenes that you need to appear on your Apple watch. However, you can always change the order later on.

Step 2

Since you have all the selected scenes that you need on your Apple smartwatch, we can proceed to enable the Hue widget on your iOS device. Right from the iOS home page, swipe from the top moving downwards to open up your notifications menu.

Immediately the notification menu is displayed; click on ‘Today’ located at the top. You can then swipe to the bottom. You can then proceed to click on ‘Edit’ once you get to the bottom of the page.

There is a green plus sign located next to the hue icon. Click on the plus sign to have the hue icon added to your widgets.

Step 3

Your Apple watch should start displaying the scenes in the selected order. The good news is that you can edit your Hue widget to change the arrangement order. What this means is that you have a lot more control thanks to the added Hue widget on your iOS device.

On your Apple Watch, you can swipe through different scenes and select your preferred one. The select scene icon lets you activate the profile that you need. Whenever you choose a scene on your Apple Watch, there will be a pulsating glow behind the specific icon. An active scene is, therefore, easy to identify when using your Apple watch.

When you need to turn off the specified scene, press harder on the icon. You will be prompted with a ‘Turn off’ button that lets you quite the scene. Your Apple Watch is now connected to your Philips Hue bulbs, thus ensuring that you get more functionality and convenience.

Conclusion

Connecting your Philips Hue bulbs with your Apple watch gives you more control. You get to quickly turn on and off the different scenes that you need. Getting to control your Hue bulbs using your Apple watch is rather cool if you think about it.

This step by step guide contains all the information you need to get a seamless connection. Now, there are other methods that you could use to get the same connection. You could always opt to use the Huemote or iConnectHue app. However, understand that the setup process might be slightly hectic when using these apps.

The methods presented above are easy to follow and quick to have set up. You will quickly and conveniently start using your Apple Watch to control your Philips Hue bulbs. Getting more functionality from your Philips Hue lights is a dream come true if you ask me.

Mike Ford

Founder & Editor

Mike is the founder of Hue Home Lighting, a huge Hue fan with far too many lights, covering home and garden. A smart home gadget addict and also enjoys the odd bit of DIY