I have a friend who had 2 Hue Lights for a while now (in different rooms) and got a Hue Bridge yesterday, so the lights would appear on the new widgets from Hue on iPhone.
For a bit of a background, I do also have a bridge in my house controlling all my lights. When set up, I had no issues at all and I use an android phone.
The goal here is for her to use her lights from her lock screen on her iPhone. So I’m trying to understand where are the issues coming from. Any feedback / further questions are greatly appreciated. Thank you so much!
iOS 17 widget issues:
From what I’ve been told, she had to individually add on and off buttons for these 2 lights, thus needing the 2x2 widget? Can’t this be done using the smaller 1x2 widget and add on/off functionalities in the same slot? I imagine that you’d need the 2x2 widget to add on and off functionalities separately, which to me, seems strange lol.
After setting up the 2x2 widget anyways, she tried to add it to the lock screen. While on the lock screen, buttons wouldn’t work. Tried to remove/add them again and after a while, they miraculously worked just fine. This is where we get to the Bridge connectivity issues.
Bridge Connectivity issues:
During the same day, after going out and coming home later on, nothing (on the widget) worked again. She noticed she was suddenly “kicked off” of her wi-fi (which never happened before!), so she turned on the hallway light to get to her router and restart it. Afterwards, she turned on the other light, but when she turned off the hallway light, it also turned off the bedroom light. And of course, after trying to turn the other light on again, nothing worked all of a sudden. She then opened the Hue app and it said “Couldn’t connect to bridge”? (I suppose this error was due to the fact that the bridge takes time to re-configure its network protocols and re-assign IP when the router has restarted). Today, she was out again and after coming back home, nothing worked again. As of this writing, using the widget works, but had to turn on the lights from the actual Hue app.
Final thoughts:
So, with that being said, the first thought that comes to my head is that the new iOS 17 Hue widgets are unreliable/buggy (not to mention you have to have separate buttons for on/off)? Why can’t she turn on/off lights after she comes back home? I have no issues turning lights on/off when I’m not home, although I’m not using any widgets on my phone.
To mention, there’s no other smart gadgets around that could interfere the zigbee signal that it sends to the bulbs. Everything is kept simple: 2 bulbs total, in different rooms, 1 bridge and the hue app. Could it be that she did setup her lights first and THEN the bridge? To somehow, I don’t know, have the bulbs still on bluetooth connectivity? I’ve seen a lot of people using Apple HomeKit, but is it necessary?
EDIT: Things that she hasn’t tried yet but seen on other posts: Resetting the bridge, reinstalling the hue app after setting up the bridge.