Control Hue bulbs. Automate. Protect. Cloud-free

"The application is the easiest and best for controlling all my bulbs"

- NC

Version 4 is in early beta. It's made freely available here for testing purposes. Since 4.0.3 it's built as a universal binary (runs natively on both M1 and Intel Macs) | EULA

Welcome to a world where you feel safer in your home, save energy and can enjoy lighting effects from cosy to practical. Philips Hue bulbs are low-power LED bulbs with all of the benefits of dimmers, time switches and colour adjustment. Hue-topia gives you manual control over your Philips Hue bulbs and makes it easy to schedule them for when you're not around. Plus other reassuring security features.

• Manual control over each bulb and groups of bulbs
• Control groups of bulbs with a single touch (individual lamps / groups / rooms and an 'all' group)
• Appear to be at home even when you're not by scheduling your lights to switch on and off, or up and down.
• The advantage of a hub (aka 'bridge') and an application like Hue-topia is that you're free of a cloud-based / online system and your scheduled times will continue to work when your computer isn't on or isn't in the building.
• Scheduled times can be slightly randomised so they don't look as if they're on a timer
• 'False dawn' and 'False dusk' which can be scheduled or started manually (just dusk) for lamps or groups
• Switch all lights on or off or access your presets from the status bar
• Access your presets really quickly by assigning your F keys
• Detects your bridge - just switch everything on and go (you'll be prompted to press the button on your bridge the first time you start Hue-topia)
• 'Badges' dock icon with the number of lamps lit
• Alternatively Script your own colour changes and effects using Applescript
• Alternatively, there's a drag-and-drop effects designer within the app for creating colour-changing or cycling effects
• Looking for LIFX support?
• Comparison of LIFX and Philips Hue

Category:Lifestyle / Home Automation

This app is enjoying a happy retirement. Thank you for your interest.

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Support

• Read the Hue-ser manual here
• If you have a problem with Huetopia, please Contact us

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Version History

The Hue-topia Mac app goes back to November 2013. To be frank, it has been in a vicious cycle of very little interest / therefore very few updates, and has not kept up with changes from Philips such as additions to their API and dropping of support for the v1 (round) bridge.

From the start, Hue-topia had its own interface concepts which it shared with LIFXstyle. These didn't always align with the concepts of the Hue system. Therefore HT was doing a lot of conversion / bridging. This led to a lot of unnecessary complexity and inconsistency within the app.

Hue-topia version 4 is a new version for 2021 and way more of an overhaul than it may appear from the interface. It is intended to be more of an interface with your bridge, and have concepts which align with the Hue system.

Key changes include:

• Presets are now Scenes. The scenes list is a nice alternative to the detailed manual control (click to select a scene appropriate for the mood or time of day, using manual controls for creating those scenes). HT4 allows you to add your own photograph / icon to represent a scene.
• Uses newer parts of the API, such as 'localtime' rather than 'time'. These changes tend to make HT less complex and more likely to work as expected.
• Sunrise and Sunset functionality used to be managed pretty heavily by HT. It calculated times using your location, allowed you to select from the various definitions of sunset/sunrise, and could alter scheduled times on the bridge accordingly. Now the Hue Bridge has its own daylight functionality with configurable offsets and it's more appropriate to make use of that. (not yet implemented in the v4 beta).
• Support for sensors. The motion sensor, besides detecting motion and having a little configurability, also has a temperature sensor which can be viewed in HT4.
• Effects and the effects designer are no longer a feature of Hue-topia. We feel it's more appropriate for this functionality to form a separate app, which we'll do if people ask.

Full version history for Hue-topia