FabianI'm sure I reported on this last year or the year before, but the question keeps coming back to me – twice this week, in fact: How do you link a second Philips Hue Bridge to your Philips Hue account?
For example, Paul writes to me in an email: “I have a holiday home in which I operate a second Hue Bridge.
Supposedly it is now possible to operate several bridges via one account. But at iConnectHue I now read in the FAQ that this is not possible and that I need a new account for each bridge. What is correct now?
A short time later Arthur wrote to me, his question is quite similar: “I'm fairly new to the Hue universe having purchased a bridge and half a dozen bulbs a few months ago for my flat, everything was great.I then bought a similar setup for my house. This is where everything went sideways as I soon found out I can't add a second address/location to the Hue app. Do you know a workaround other than creating a new hue account specifically for one location or the other?”
Currently a second account is still needed
The matter is very simple: Each Hue Bridge currently still needs its own account. A separate email address is required for each account. If you really only have one address, a separate registration is required. In the meantime, however, you can also log in to Philips Hue directly with your Google or Apple account, even if you have already used the mail address linked to it. And when push comes to shove, a second email address with a provider like Gmail or GMX costs nothing.
As soon as you have activated both accounts in the Hue app, you can easily switch between the two Hue bridges by pressing and holding the “Home” button in the menu. Alternatively, the switch is also possible in the settings under “My Hue System”. Automatic switching via the geofencing function is not yet possible with the Hue app.
Soon it will work with one account
In the context of the announcement that Philips Hue will only be usable with an account in future, Hue inventor George Yianni has held out the prospect that it will soon be possible to use several Hue Bridges with just one account.
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I had an X chat with TWEETHUE and they stated the following ‘We do want to highlight that, at the moment, there are no plans to support multiple Bridges on one Hue Account.’. I had some questions about setting up an second bridge. Guess support doesn’t know all of the plans or cannot tell but also why explicitly name there are no plans to support instead of ‘no comment’. Guess will have to wait and see.
Well, I read the Verge article and it should be clear; ‘He (George Yianni) also said the account system means you’ll be able to use multiple Hue bridges in the same home without creating separate accounts for each one.’
So I asked Tweethue again about what their boss had to say about this 😉
Tweehue after asking about the comments of the cto ‘It’s indeed coming in 2024, but that could also be the end of 2024, so that’s why we’re not communicating this yet.‘
Well that’s nice to know
Fabian, I do not mind having two different Hue accounts to manage the > 70 devices in my home, as long as I can integrate both bridges into HomeKit. Is that (still) possible? Thank you!
That’s no problem.