Hue For Mac

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One of the fantastic perks of Philips Hue lights is how many devices and apps can work with or enhance the functionality of them. The developer community is gigantic. One platform that’s a bit more sparse on Hue support is the Mac. Wouldn’t it be great if while already using your Mac, you didn’t need to reach over to your iPhone and launch an app to control the lights?

A few apps, most of which cost money, do exist for the Mac that can help out with this. But we’re going to focus on just one. It’s free and it has more features than even the official Philips Hue app for iOS supports.

Philips Lighting BV published the Philips Hue Bridge v1 App for Android operating system mobile devices, but it is possible to download and install Philips Hue Bridge v1 for PC or Computer with operating systems such as Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10 and Mac. The Philips Hue Sync application creates a lightscripts for your lights based on content you watch or play on your PC or Mac. Via screen grabbing and a smart color algorithm, it matches your Philips Hue lights to on screen action in real-time. One of the fantastic perks of Philips Hue lights is how many devices and apps can work with or enhance the functionality of them. The developer community is gigantic. One platform that’s a bit more. Quickly create the perfect ambience for any occasion using hueDynamic’s online Philips Hue scene gallery. Categoried for swift navigation and with manual search, a single tap allows you to import the perfect scene to your Hue bridge.

Philips Hue Mac App

The best Mac app for Philips Hue is the Colors for Hue. Why? It’s free and it does nearly everything you could ask a Hue controller to do.

First, you have to pair the app as always with your Hue bridge. Launch Colors for Hue, then head over to wherever you put your bridge and press the center button to confirm the link.

Colors for Hue sits in your menu bar. If you click it, you’ll see a list of every light bulb connected to that bridge along with an indication of their current brightness level.

If you have Hue bulbs that support color, hovering over the name of your bulb will reveal an entire color palette to choose from. As for Hue bulbs that don’t support color, but just various color temperatures for white, you can adjust that here too using the slider. Since my bulbs are just pure white, I can only adjust the brightness from the main menu.

Grouping Lights

One the largest downsides to the official Philips Hue app is that it doesn’t support the grouping of several light bulbs into one control. Yes, you can set scenes that have brightness and color presets for all the light bulbs, but sometimes you just need a few grouped together.

For instance, my ceiling light is powered by three different lightbulbs. In the Philips Hue app, I’d have to control them either by turning on or off all the lights in the room (four for me total) or each lightbulb one by one.

Thankfully, in Colors for Hue, I’ve been able to group the three ceiling bulbs into a single Ceiling light. To do this, click Preferences in the menu then click Groups. Highlight the bulbs you want to group together by pressing either Command or Shift.

Tip: It helps if you give your lights specific names that can aid you in remembering which ones they are within the room, rather than just keeping them in default numerical order.

Click Group and you’re done. Now, the brightness slider in Colors for Hue controls all three bulbs on the ceiling at once.

Delayed Off

Colors for Hue also supports Delayed Off, which is basically a sleep timer for your lights. Hover over the light or group of lights you want to set a delay for, then in the secondary menu hover over Delayed Off. Choose which amount of time you want to keep the lights on for before they automatically shut off.

Tip: Hue For MacPreferences has an optional setting for slow dimming. This will dim the lights slowly before they go off instead of abruptly going dark. Select Slow Dimming for Delayed Off to enable this.

Colors for Hue is available from the Mac App Store.

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  • Philips Hue smart lighting products are by far the most popular option out there, but Philips Hue definitely isn’t the only game in town.
  • There are some other big lighting companies have come out with smart lights of their own, and they often cost far less than Philips Hue.
  • The best example right now comes from Sylvania — and Amazon has a 4-pack of Sylvania Smart+ Full Color LED light bulbs on sale for less than a single Philips Hue bulb!

Can you believe that Philips Hue color A19 bulbs cost a whopping $50 each? That’s a price some people are willing to pay because Philips Hue is the leading brand in the smart lighting space. But if you’re just getting started with your smart lighting setup or if you’re sick and tired of paying sky-high prices for light bulbs, we’ve got another option that you should consider.

BGR’s Top Deal of the Day

Philips Hue Sync For Mac

Rather than paying $50 per bulb for Philips Hue, why not pay $8.75 for Sylvania Smart+ Full Color LED light bulbs? They support the same 16 million colors and they’re just as bright. They also can be controlled using a smartphone or your voice thanks to Alexa and Google Assistant support. They’re nice and bright, plus they’re dimmable so you can tune the color and the brightness anytime you want. In fact, the only Philips Hue feature they’re missing is an astronomical price tag.

Scroll down for all the details, but keep in mind that this deal might not be available for much longer.

Hue Camera For Mac

Here are the main details from the Amazon listing:

  • No hub or additional hardware is required
  • Dimmable with app and voice control
  • Create timers and routines to automate your smart home lighting setup
  • Voice control works with Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri Shortcuts
  • Customize with millions of colors and tunable white (2700K-6500K)
  • 90+ CRI (Color Rendering Index) for accurate, crisp and vibrant color presentation
  • Easy setup with the (free) SYLVANIA Smart WiFi App

Follow @BGRDeals on Twitter to keep up with the latest and greatest deals we find around the web. Prices subject to change without notice and any coupons mentioned above may be available in limited supply.Helppoint download for macbook pro.