Philips is planning to introduce support for Apple's Shortcuts feature in its Hue app in iOS 12, Philips announced today at the IFA electronics trade show in Berlin (via iCulture).
With the integration, Hue owners will be able to add lighting recipes to various Siri Shortcuts, such as shifting the lights in the dining room to a certain color with a Siri voice command like "Dinner Time," as demoed by Philips.
Siri Shortcuts is a Siri feature designed to allow users to create multi-step shortcuts using first and third-party apps that can be activated by Siri voice command.
Shortcuts are deeply customizable, and third party apps like the Hue app are able to develop quick actions for Siri that can be incorporated into Shortcuts recipes. When Hue integration launches, Hue options will be available in the dedicated Shortcuts app.
The Hue shortcuts will be compatible with other shortcuts, so you can have a whole "Dinner Time" setup that not only changes the lights, but also does things like turn on music and text family members that the food is ready.
Siri is able to suggest frequently used Shortcuts right on the iPhone's lock screen and Apple Watch, so if there are Hue-related lighting shortcuts that are often used, these options will be able to be implemented with a simple tap.
Right now, the Shortcuts app, which is what's used to create these Siri Shortcuts, is available to developers in a beta capacity, but it will be released when iOS 12 is released. Sometime after that, Philips will presumably implement Shortcuts support.
Philips today also announced a new power feature that's designed to allow Hue lights to retain their color and brightness settings after a power outage or after a lamp has been manually turned off, and the company is partnering with new lighting companies that include Makris, Kichler, Busch-Jaegar, Illumra, Koizumi, and John Lewis for its Friends of Hue program.
Top Rated Comments
Please please please tell me that means if the light was off, it'll remain off when the power comes back on? Because being woken up at 3am after a powercut with 6 Hue lights on full blast is a nightmare.
It’s about time!
But really, HomePod should be able to do this in the Home app. The AppleTV too. They're HomeKit devices.
A Siri shortcut will be able to combine HomeKit recipes with other other actions. Hey Siri, get ready for Dinner could trigger the Dinner HomeKit scene, dimming the lights and turning on the spotlight over the dining table and then separately telling HomePod to play a dinner music playlist and texting the kids in the family to come down for dinner. This can already be done without Hue explicitly supporting it.
[doublepost=1535670313][/doublepost]Seriously? I have the maximum number of devices & accessories and it's working just fine off one bridge. Maybe you have some other problem (ie. wireless interference/channel issue)?