How to Transfer Philips hue Bridge to a New Owner

thumbnail for blog post Moving Hue to a New Owner

While there is no easy way to transfer a Philips Hue bridge to a new owner, there are some work arounds that work pretty well! This article will primarily focus on the selling of a home with Philips Hue products to a new owner, but it can also be applied in other circumstances as well.

Initial Considerations before you Transfer your Philips Hue Bridge

If you’re like me, you probably have quite a few Philips Hue bulbs in your home. This is great when you live in the home, but can become a bit of a headache when you go to move. For me, many of my bulbs are fed live power. This means that there isn’t a traditional switch to turn them on or off, just a Philips Hue Dimmer Switch or Philips Hue Button. This is great so that you can keep connection to your bulbs at all time, but when you go to sell it makes it hard to revert from the Philips Hue bulbs back to standard light bulbs.

What to do if there is no internet?

Internet is the backbone of the smart home. Many smart devices don’t function very well, if at all, without it! This raises the issue of what happens during the time when the internet gets shut off when a home is sold, until the time when a new owner comes in and sets up their internet.

Lights are one of the most important parts of a home – especially at night. If the lights don’t function, that’s going to be a problem. This is not a problem with Philips Hue products, as the bridge will function as normal without internet! This makes it very important to not factory reset your Philips Hue Bridge before selling your home. If you keep the bridge setup just as it is, everything will function fine during the in-between time.

Removing Personal Data from the Philips Hue Bridge

Since we are not able to fully factory reset the Philips Hue bridge, we have to get creative. The Hub itself stores information on rooms and device names, but it isn’t necessarily linked to your hue account. Follow these steps below to clear any personal information from your Hue Hub

Renaming Lights, Accessories, and Entertainment Areas

  1. Hop on over to the settings tab in the Philips Hue App
  1. Let’s start by clicking “Lights” and making sure none of our lights have names that would give away any personal information. I like to keep the names simple, but descriptive to where the light is.
  1. To change the name of the light, click on it and then hit the little pencil icon to the right of the current name. You can change the description to whatever you like. I already have mine named how I want, so I’ll move on to the next step!

Note: Now is a great time to remove any lights that are either not staying with the house, or are no longer working. Check out this post on how to remove lights and accessories from the Philips Hue app/bridge.

  1. Now repeat steps 2 and 3 for accessories and entertainment areas well!

Renaming Rooms

  1. Jump back to the Home tab and let’s look at the rooms. If a room has a name that gives away any personal info it is best to change it. It’s common to name a room after the person who occupies it, like “Zach’s Room.” I suggest renaming any room named that way to something like “Bedroom 1” or “Bedroom 2.”
  1. To do this, select the room you want to change. Select the 3 dots in the top right corner and select “edit room” from the menu that pops up.
  1. Rename it to whatever you desire and click done.

Note: Now is a great time to remove any rooms that don’t have any lights or accessories in them. This will help keep your bridge nice and organized.

Un-Pair Voice Assistants

  1. It’s time to unlink the voice assistants (HomeKit/Siri). Go to the settings tab and select “Voice Assistants”
  1. We are going to focus on Siri & HomeKit, but these steps should apply to the other assistants as well. Select “Siri & HomeKit.”
  1. At the bottom, select “Settings” and then click “Reset.”

Sign out of your Account

  1. Now you are going to sign out of your account. On the settings page click “My Account” at the top.
  1. Click “Sign Out”

Remove Bridge from App

  1. The last step is to remove the bridge from your app! To do this, go to the settings tab and select “My Hue System.”
  1. Select the bridge you’ve been working on. It should say “Active” in green underneath it.
  1. Select “Remove” to remove the bridge from your app.

That is all there is to it! It may be a lot of steps to transfer a Philips hue Bridge to a new owner, but it is not incredibly difficult!

Transfer over the Philips Hue Bridge to a new owner

It’s really easy to get the next home owner up and running! Just have them setup the bridge as they normally would. Everything should automatically populate into their app once the bridge is paired. For instructions on how to do this, check out this blog post!

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4 Comments

  1. Hey I just bought a home and the previous owner did not leave any serial numbers. The light are out of reach. They left the hue bridge but when we connected the bridge can’t find the lights. What do I do?

    1. Hm. He must have wiped the bridge as well. You can try going to add lights and seeing if they come up automatically, but I think based on my experience your only option is going to be getting up to the light to find the serial #.

  2. Hi Zach! Thanks for these helpful guidance. I am still struggling becoming the new owner. I am already member and can access the bridge but like to kick-out the two existing admins and become the only one.
    The link to a post about this topic does not work anymore: https://fieldcrafttech.com/?p=1021
    Do you maybe have a new one? Thanks!

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