You can turn your Philips Hue lights on and off at specific times during the day, but here’s how to automatically turn your Philips Hue lights off whenever you leave the house, no matter what time it is.
While Philips Hue lights are great for turning them on and off remotely using your smartphone, they can actually do so much more. Using IFTTT you can set alarms and timers and create all sorts of different “recipes”.
However, you may not know that you can have your Philips Hue lights turn off automatically when you leave the house, so you never have to worry about whether you actually leave the lights on.
There are several ways to set this up, but both ways involve using geofencing, a fancy term to have some kind of virtual barrier, and whenever you leave or enter this barrier then a certain action will take effect.
In this case, your Philips Hue lights will turn off when your smartphone’s GPS detects that you are exiting a predetermined barrier.
Here’s how to set it up and have your Philips Hue lights turn off automatically when you leave the house.
Turn Off Philips Hue Lights When You Leave
Perhaps the best way to turn off your lights when you’re on the road is to use the official Philips Hue app, which has a built-in geofencing feature.
To set this up, simply open the Philips Hue app and tap the Menu button in the upper left corner. From there, tap on it.
Next, you will be shown two options: and . Tap on it and then a map will be displayed and a pin for your current location so make sure you are at home when setting this up.
At the bottom, tap on it and then put a checkmark next to each light you want to turn off. If you want all the lights to turn off, tap towards the top right corner. After that, tap the arrow icon in the upper left corner to go back.
Tap in the top right corner to officially enable geofencing and have your lights turn off automatically when you leave. From now on, your Philips Hue lights will automatically turn off when the app detects that you are leaving the house.
The only downside is that there is no way to set the geofencing barrier, so if you want finer control over how far from your home you have to be for the lights to go out, I recommend using IFTTT.
Using IFTTT
If you want better control over the geofencing barrier, IFTTT is probably the best option for that. We’ve covered how to use IFTTT and how to use it with your Philips Hue lights before, but here’s how to set your lights to turn off automatically when you leave a certain area.
First, you will want to download the IFTTT app for your smartphone. Then open it and tap the mortar and pestle icon in the upper right corner.
From there, tap on the icon and then tap on the bottom on the next screen.
After that, find or (depending on what device you are using of course) and then select the trigger.
After that, you will customize the geofence barrier by zooming in and out and moving the circle to create your own type barrier. street, you can customize it like this.
Once you are satisfied with your geofence, tap then find the Philips Hue channel. On the next screen, select and then choose which lights you want to turn off.
On the next screen, press the button to create your IFTTT recipe.
Note that you can close the Philips Hue app or the IFTTT app completely and it will continue to use your location in the background.