A cottage industry of app development around the Philips Hue family of smart LED lighting has produced a nice collection of software that runs on the popular Apple TV platform. Certainly, the native Hue smartphone app is always an option for lighting control, and remains the gatekeeper for adding and deleting Hue accessories and for the creation and editing of lighting scene scripts.
Hue TV an Appealing Option
But if an Apple TV box is already in your living room or on your Christmas wish list, having a Hue-capable app on the big screen can offer additional convenience. That’s the case with Hue TV, a $2.99 app by developer Ole Mikkel Sjolie, a nicely-crafted interface for Hue lighting of all shapes and sizes, easily controllable through swipe and tap gestures on the Apple TV Siri Remote.
Setting Up
The app requires the presence of the Philips Hue Bridge, and enables granular control of individual Philips Hue lamps on the Individual lights tab, or en masse through the All lights tab. A Scenes tab displays all scenes that have been defined in the Hue app, and favorite scenes can be tapped to add them to the bottom of the All Lights tab.
So you don’t have any Philips Hue light yet? Philips offers starter packages containing Hue lamps and the Hue bridge, which is all you need to get going.
Smooth Operator
Everything worked smoothly and reliably for us using the latest version of the Hue TV app (3.0) on the latest Apple TV boxes and latest version of tvOS, including Apple TV 4K and Apple TV fourth generation boxes running tvOS 12.1.1. The Hue TV app is just as responsive as the native Hue app, meaning lights and scenes react instantly when a button is tapped.
If Apple TV control of your Philips Hue lighting is desired, Hue TV works smoothly and reliably. It is certainly well worth a look.
Editor’s Note: This article was revised on December 16, 2018 to reflect compatibility with the latest Apple TV gear following testing in our labs.
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