How to Setup Philips Hue with Homekit
Setting up Philips Hue lights and accessories with HomeKit is a great way to get your smart home started! Lighting is arguably the simplest and most noticeable smart home accessory you can have in your home, and Apple’s HomeKit is the best place to start for all of your smart home needs!
Getting Started
To get started, you’ll need a Philips Hue bridge and an iOS device.
If you haven’t already setup your bridge in the Philips Hue app, that will be the first step. I wrote an article here about how to get your bridge and lights paired to the Philips Hue app.
Syncing to HomeKit
To get our hue lights talking to HomeKit, we will go into the Philips Hue App and head to the settings tab. From there we will select “Voice Assistants” and see that there are a few different options. Since we are focused on homekit, we are just going to select “Siri & HomeKit” and ignore the other options.
Next it will provide some prompts to get started. Go ahead and click setup and follow the steps provided.
It will prompt you to select a home that you want to add the lights to. There should be a default home already created called “My Home” in the list, but if you want to setup a different home you’re welcome to do that too. Check out this article for more information on setting up a home in HomeKit
Next the app will guide you through pairing the bridge and authenticating it. It is important that you are able to physically access your Hue Bridge for this step as you’ll need to press a button on it during the pairing process. You will also need to be able to read the HomeKit code located on the back of the bridge and input it into the app.
Now you’re all set! You can use Siri to control your lights, and any future lights you add in the Philips Hue app will automatically sync into your Apple Home app/HomeKit.
Accessing Lights in the Home app
Now that you have your Philips Hue bridge added to HomeKit you can open the home app and see all of your lights! By default your lights will show up on the favorites page. As you can see, I only have 1 light added – Office Desk Lamp. I can click on the light to toggle it on or off, or long press on it to view more options such as changing the color and brightness
