FabianIf you are one of those people who use a lot of Hue devices and therefore rely on two or more Hue Bridges, then I have very good news for you today. It is now possible to link multiple Bridges together in the Philips Hue app. This means that lights throughout the house can be controlled directly in the Hue app, even if they are linked to different Bridges. But first things first.
I discovered the new function after updating the Philips Hue app to version 5.31. There is no mention of multi-bridge support in the notes in the App Store, which simply states the following about the new features of the version: “Loving our iOS widgets? You can now use one to open your Secure camera’s live view right from your Home Screen. Just tap and hold your Home Screen, tap Edit, and tap Add widget to set it up.” Anyone who reads the Hueblog closely will know that this function was already activated with version 5.30.
How to set up multi-bridge support
To link several bridges together, you need to go to the settings in the Hue app. There you will find the following note in the ‘Living areas’ section: ‘Do several Homes actually form a single Home? You can now place the Bridges together in one Home, which makes control much easier.’ Tap on this message.
You will then be guided through the automatic migration. You simply select the bridge that you want to move to another ‘Home’. It is important to note that the bridge to be moved must not be connected to a security system. You may need to remove Hue Secure cameras first and then add them again later. If you have only linked the cameras to one Bridge anyway, there is no problem. In the last step of the migration, the ‘empty’ home is then removed from the second Bridge, but it will still remain in operation.
Finally, all you have to do is sort the rooms and zones of the two bridges according to your taste on the start page of the Hue app.
The Multi-Bridge function currently still has these limitations
Some functions will follow later. For example, an option to fully integrate a home with multiple Bridges into Amazon Alexa. And the control of lights on Bridge A using switches and sensors from Bridge B is also something that will be looked at in the future. At the moment, you still need to organise the hardware in your home properly.
However, some features of Hue Secure are already included in the Multi-Bridge support. For example, a light alarm triggered by you in the app or by a Secure accessory can make the lights flash throughout the house, even if they are distributed across several Hue Bridges.
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Finally merging the bridges in the app is a start…!
can you associate both bridges to the same hue cloud account to control them both remotely?
Is there any commitment from Philips to deliver the other features you mentioned (shared routines & Alexa/Google integration) ?
Or is it more “we will look into it” meaning we might get it in 1 or 2 years time?
We never know with Hue 😀
I can confirm remote connection is now available for all hubs connected through a single hue account
Hi I have been waiting for this feature for years. I have somehow ended up with three hue accounts and am confused about meet hue etc. I can get as far as the options to move my two bridges to one home but when I try and link bridges the app says I don’t have the correct permissions. I can’t log in to one of my accounts as I have lost the password and the reset email never reaches my gmail account.
Is there a way to keep all the bridge and light settings across all my hue devices and move to one login. The reason for three accounts is that I managed to blow on of my bridges by plugging it in to the wrong power supply so needed to buy a new one and reset everything up ( complete pain btw) sorry for ramble!,
As long as you have local access to the Bridge, you can just log out and create a new account then within the Hue app. Everything is stored locally on the bridge.
Hi Fabian,
I do not see much difference.
The only difference is it used to show Bridges as “Bridges” now they are shown as “Home” and you can rename it.
We are still not able to control device in first bridge with device in another bridge.
I use other apps like Google Home or Apple Shortcut to do it right now. I also use Hue Essential to do some tricks.
Not much difference? Well, at least you can control every room without switching the bridges every time.
And “remote connection” is available from one account with all hubs.
This is a big change for me.
Before I could only control some of the lights remotely
It seems Location setting is fixed in this release aswell (Android)
I’m not seeing “Living Spaces” or “Home” after the update on Android. I verified that I am on 5.31. Is it worded differently on Android? Thanks for all the Hue news!
I just went to Settings->Hue Bridges and the same message was there:
“Do you want to link multiple hubs to one account”
Has anyone gone through the process of setting adding an additional bridge to an existing home? I have a brand new bridge and about 30 devices that I bought about three months ago and have been waiting to setup in addition to my current bridge with about 70 devices on it.
My plan is to remove about 20 devices from my existing hub, set up the new hub, add the 20 old devices + the new 30 devices to the new hub.
Has anyone gone through a similar process since the multi-bridge support was enabled?
UPDATE:
I am android 14 with Hue 5.31.0.
I only have one Hue account with one bridge, but have a second bridge and 30 devices in a tote that I have been waiting to set up.
For anyone who does not yet see a “homes” area, what you need to do is:
NOTE: Before starting, you should notice that there is a bridge icon at the top left of your Hue home screen (and when you tap this, there is where you see the name of your bridge).
1. Go into settings (the SETTINGS gear/cog at the bottom left)
2. You should then see the message of “USE ONE ACCOUNT FOR ALL” (as shown at the top of this post)
3. On the next screen, you just click “start” or “do now” or whatever action you are presented with.
4. Once I did the last step, now I saw “Your Hue Homes are ready to go!” and there was only a Done action.
Once I completed these steps, when I am back on my Hue home screen, the “bridge” icon was replaced with a “Home” icon. When I tap it, a slide up panel opens that is titled “Homes”, where my Home is listed (and Bluetooth setup).
Then, when I go into SETTINGS → Bridges, I see the “INFO” box about “Are multiple Homes actually 1 Home?”. From here it looks like I can add a new bridge to my existing home.
Cheers!
Thank you for this, I completely missed that message on the main setting screen.
Thank you!
Well, it is useless for me If I can’t control a light attached to bridge A from a HUE Dimmer attached to bridge B. I am highly disappointed by this update because I don’t control my HUE system by my phone very often.
Does anybody know, when HUE will add function like “cross-control” between bridges, dimmers and lights?
Thanks!
Brilliant first step. Glad to see Hue actually making progress on this. But agree with others. Need to be able to cross-access devices and (ideally) treat all bridges equally from Alexa
But, tbh, this is already further than I expected!
Great that it’s now possible to add multiple bridges in a single home! I have four, so this makes things much more manageable. What I find a bit disappointing, though, is that you can’t combine devices from Bridge A with those from Bridge B. For example, grouping lights from different bridges into a single zone or having sensors trigger actions on lights across multiple bridges isn’t possible.
It’s not a huge deal since I use Homey for that. However, I now have two bridges for my garden, and it would have been nice to create one large zone for the entire front yard with lights from both bridges. Hopefully, this functionality will be added in the future. For now, I’ve just created two zones with two scenes and use Homey to trigger them when the sun sets. It works fine, but it does require an extra zone, which makes it less tidy.
Maybe I’m not imaginative enough or my setup is smaller than those here but can you not just move your accessories like switches/motion detectors to the bridge with the room you’d like to control?
I’m at my max for my first bridge and have been waiting for this functionality before buying more lights etc…. I planned on separating interior and exterior lights onto there own bridge. I also planned on putting the accessories for said rooms on the same bridge as their lights.
I guess what I’m asking is why would you want to for instance put a switch on a different bridge than the bridge that the lights you wanted to control with said switch on?
Thanks for reading!
Does anyone know if there is a way to migrate lights and accessories to the new bridges once added? Or do I need to remove them all and re-add them to the new bridge? Thanks!
Can someone help me here? If i want to add a brand new or recebtly reset bridge to my account how can i do this with the new multi-bridge feature unlocked? The only thing i seem to be able to do is add the bridge directly i.e. local connection. (Wifi only). From what i am seeing it looks like this feature allows you to migrate previously setup bridges to your account but i dont want to signup for an account for a beidge just to immediately transfer it over to my main account.
Circling back around to answer my own question.
YES you do have to setup another Hue account (with a different email address) but once this is done and your second home/bridge is setup the Hue app will ask you if you if you want to merge the accounts and it even lets you pick which account you wish to roll everything into.
It’ll even ask if multiple homes are just one home and allow you to move the new home/bridge to the original home. It’ll then ask you if you want to delete the new (temporary) home you created for the new bridge. Once that is done you will see your original home with “2 Hue Bridges” attached to it. Your temp home you create will be gone along with all traces of it. Im not sure if the Hue account your create for this exercise will also be deleted though but I think it will. I used Guerrilla Mail (Disposable Temporary E-Mail Address) to create my temp account.
Home this helps!
Why is there a 5 bridges limit?
Are you able to set a scene across multiple bridges? Or do you have to have separate scenes for each bridge?
The bridges, lights and accessories are still separate for the moment it seems.
E.g. one the automations tab there is a selection at the top for Hub1/Hub2/etc…
So scenes, automations cannot be linked.
If you want the same behaviour you must duplicate the automations in each hub.
I don’t really use automations in the hue app. I guess what I’m trying to ask is for instance could I create a zone that contains lights from multiple bridges and then go in and set a premade hue scene such as “ Honolulu” for that zone. Or would I have to set Honolulu separately for lights on each hub?
Great article.
Has anyone tried to use “Out of home control” after combining your bridges?
It used to work for my 4 bridges, before combining them, but afterwards it doesn’t work, and the setting for it, at the top of the settings page is gone too.
Anybody got this to work?
I have the same problem. Have you found a solution to make it work?
Works after logging out and logging in
Well, I didn’t leave the empty home when setting up my two bridges in one home.
How do I delete it now, and how will this effect my wife and her Hue app, since she has the the second login?
Just get your wife to delete and reinstall the Hue app, then log in to your new combined home.
Thank you, that did the trick! 👍🏻
Yay! I have both bridges in one account now! I also set up the first bridge in apple homekit, but i’m not seeing a way to add the second bridge to my homekit. Any advice?
Aber nach wie vor sind alle Daten verloren, wenn mal ein Bridge defekt sein sollte, oder? Eine Cloud Lösung bzw Backup ist überfällig.