One of the great perks of Philips Hue lights is the number of devices and apps that can work with or enhance their functionality. The developer community is huge. A less supported platform in Hue is Mac. Wouldn’t it be great if, while using a Mac, you didn’t have to reach for your iPhone and launch an app to control the lights?
This free app gives you full control and grouping of Philips Hue lights from your Mac’s menu bar | shutter
A few apps, most of which cost money, exist for Mac that can help with this problem. But we’ll just focus on one. The app is free and has more features than the official Philips Hue app for iOS supports.
Philips Hue Mac App
The best Mac app for Philips Hue is Colors for Hue. Why? It’s free, and it does pretty much everything you could ask a Hue controller to do.
You must first pair the app as always with your Hue Bridge. Launch Colors for Hue, then go wherever you placed your bridge and press the button in the center to confirm the link.
The colors for Hue are in your menu bar. If you click on it, you’ll see a list of every light bulb connected to that bridge along with an indicator of their current brightness level.
If you have a Hue bulb that supports color, hovering over your bulb name will bring up the entire palette of colors to choose from. For Hue bulbs that don’t support color but only support different color temperatures for white, you can also adjust here using the sliders. Since my bulbs are pure white only, I can only adjust the brightness from the main menu.
group of lights
One major drawback of the official Philips Hue app is that it doesn’t support grouping multiple bulbs into one control. Yes, you can set scenes with brightness and color presets for all the bulbs, but sometimes you just need to group a few bulbs together.
For example, my ceiling light is powered by three different bulbs. In the Philips Hue app, I have to control them by turning all the lights in the room on or off (for me a total of four) or one by one.
Thankfully, in Colors for Hue, I was able to group three ceiling light bulbs into one Ceiling light. To do this, click Interest in the menu then click Groups. Mark the bulbs you want to group together by pressing either Request or Change.
Tip:
Click Group and you’re done. Now, the brightness slider in Colors for Hue controls all three bulbs in the ceiling at the same time.
delay off
Color for Hue also supports Delayed Off, which is essentially a sleep timer for your lights. Hover over the lamp or group of lights you want to delay, then in the submenu, hover over delay off. Choose how long you want the lights to stay on before they automatically turn off.
Tip: Options has an optional setting for slow fade. This will dim the lights slowly before turning off instead of suddenly darkening. Select Slow dimming to turn off delay
Colors for Hue are available from the Mac App Store.
ALSO READ: How to Hide Running Apps on Your Mac
Categories: How to
Source: thpttranhungdao.edu.vn/en/
