Philips Hue Lights Finally Let You Control the Power-on Behaviour

If you are into smart home goodies or have smart lights, you probably own Philips Hue lights. Philips offers a lot of control over Hue lights, and the platform connects with a bunch of different third-party services that let you take things to a whole another level.

However, to this date, a big feature that’s been lacking on the Philips Hue lights is the ability to control the power-on behaviour. In the past, when you turned on a Philips Hue light, they would turn on with full brightness and to the default settings. And with the latest update to the Philips Hue app, you can now control this behaviour to turn on with the previous state. This means the lights will turn back on with the same settings as it was turned off with, without hurting your eyes with the full brightness.

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And although that’s definitely a nice change, you still don’t get any granular control over the power-on behaviour. For example, it would be nice to be able to have the lights power on to a different profile, or a completely different set of settings instead of the previous state.

Either way, you can get the new power-on behaviour enabled on your Philips Hue lights with the latest update to the Android app here, and the iOS app here.

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Conversation 18 comments

  • lvthunder

    Premium Member
    13 December, 2018 - 1:35 pm

    <p>So you mean until now if the power went off in the middle of the night when it came back on all the Hue lights would turn on to full brightness. Yikes.</p>

    • Bloke10

      Premium Member
      13 December, 2018 - 1:49 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#381593">In reply to lvthunder:</a></em></blockquote><p>yes exactly, that's been really annoying, nice little change. Just changed this and it is possible to choose do each individual light either full brightness or last state.</p>

    • Skolvikings

      13 December, 2018 - 5:20 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#381593">In reply to lvthunder:</a></em></blockquote><p>Yes exactly. Easily the dumbest aspect of having these lights. Now after the update we no longer have to deal with that. Hooray.</p>

  • VancouverNinja

    Premium Member
    13 December, 2018 - 2:04 pm

    <p>Hue lights had too many problems associated with them; including the need for the hub to be directly connected the router (instead of being connected through an Ethernet switch ); deal breaker for us. </p><p><br></p><p>As a result we decided the best long term solution was to change the actual light/dimmer switches to Leviton. This has turned out to be completely superior and we can pick and choose whatever LED lights we want with full centralized control.</p><p><br></p><p><br></p>

    • MassDude

      13 December, 2018 - 2:13 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#381599"><em>In reply to VancouverNinja:</em></a></blockquote><blockquote><em>Hmmm … my hub is connected to an Ethernet switch and I have no issues.</em></blockquote><p><br></p>

      • VancouverNinja

        Premium Member
        13 December, 2018 - 2:51 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#381601">In reply to MassDude:</a></em></blockquote><p>Maybe mine was an older version of the hub? I think is was V1. I would not work when connected to my Ethernet switch. It did state it was a requirement in the manual.</p>

        • evox81

          Premium Member
          13 December, 2018 - 3:14 pm

          <blockquote><em><a href="#381667">In reply to VancouverNinja:</a></em></blockquote><p>Being that a router is just a switch… from a networking perspective, I'm having a hard time understanding why that would be. (Not debating you, just thinking out loud.)</p><p><br></p><p>I, like the others, have mine run through an additional switch without issue. Both the V1 and the V2 were set up this way.</p>

          • VancouverNinja

            Premium Member
            13 December, 2018 - 3:26 pm

            <blockquote><em><a href="#381683">In reply to evox81:</a></em></blockquote><p>It does seem, after looking around the net, that I probably could have gotten it to work. There are lots of older posts with issues regarding switch problems and the bridge. </p><p><br></p><p>However I am happy that we just updated all our home switches and dimmers instead. I think we have two switches for our entire home that have not been updated as it made zero sense to do it. </p>

            • Skolvikings

              13 December, 2018 - 5:19 pm

              <blockquote><em><a href="#381698">In reply to VancouverNinja:</a></em></blockquote><p>I have mine plugged into a cheap ethernet switch and I've never had any issues whatsoever. It just works.</p>

              • VancouverNinja

                Premium Member
                13 December, 2018 - 8:14 pm

                <blockquote><em><a href="#381742">In reply to Skolvikings:</a></em></blockquote><p>Well at least both the key issues are resolved now. A good thing for users.</p>

    • lezmaka

      Premium Member
      13 December, 2018 - 2:18 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#381599">In reply to VancouverNinja:</a></em></blockquote><p>Really? I guess I'm lucky. My hub has 2 switches in between it and the router and is actually kind of a pain to get to press the button to allow an app to connect.</p>

  • jwpear

    Premium Member
    13 December, 2018 - 3:50 pm

    <p>These lights are just too expensive and I'm surprised they have this sort of issue given the price.</p>

    • Skolvikings

      13 December, 2018 - 5:18 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#381707">In reply to jwpear:</a></em></blockquote><p>Well they no longer have this sort of issue. Problem solved. :)</p>

  • Skolvikings

    13 December, 2018 - 5:17 pm

    <p>This is huge! No more being woken up to blinding lights when there's a power hiccup in the middle of the night.</p><p><br></p><p>For those that might be confused by this… if you had your lights set to 20% brightness, told them to shut off, then turned them back on, they would come on at 20%. That's always been the case.</p><p><br></p><p>What wasn't the case was if the light lost power somehow (power outage, someone physically flipped the power switch), they would always come on to 100% full brightness when power was restored. Obviously, if your home experienced a power outage overnight, you got woken up to bright lights as soon as the power was restored. You didn't get the luxury of waking up in the morning, seeing a blinking microwave clock and saying to yourself, "huh, we must have lost power sometime overnight." Oh no, you were woken up with extremely bright lights. Not good. This fixes that.</p>

    • VMax

      Premium Member
      13 December, 2018 - 11:23 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#381739">In reply to Skolvikings:</a></em></blockquote><p><br></p><p>Thanks for adding the "for those that might be confused by this" line – I was SO confused by the article not differentiating between turning on the light and turning on the device that the light is part of. It sounded ridiculous that such a product could even exist, if it were referring to turning on the light! I appreciate the clarification :)</p>

  • MikeGalos

    14 December, 2018 - 10:35 am

    <p>Bigger problems with the Philips Hue system are that they require a separate dedicated controller box rather than having the lights themselves be intelligent devices that use actual Internet protocols and the fact that Hue lights are very dim with half the maximum lumens of their competitors. </p><p><br></p><p>That's some of why a lot of us who are "into smart home goodies or have smart lights" <em>don't </em>own Philips Hue lights and own LIFX lights instead.</p>

    • Bob Shutts

      14 December, 2018 - 12:11 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#381873"><em>In reply to MikeGalos:</em></a><em> Wouldn't that make each light prohibitively expensive? Just asking; I don't know how quickly these things need replacing.</em></blockquote><p><br></p>

      • MikeGalos

        14 December, 2018 - 4:24 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#381922">In reply to Bob_Shutts:</a></em></blockquote><p>They last quite a few years and they're roughly the same price depending on sale prices and specials. Remember the Philips Hue bulbs still have to communicate with their hub so they have a fair amount of tech in them as well.</p>

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