FabianPeople have been asking for this feature for years, and now it’s almost here. Even though there isn’t a specific launch date yet, Philips Hue has officially unveiled the “Backup & Restore” feature. According to Hue creator George Yianni, it’s set to launch in the coming months. However, there are some important details you absolutely need to know.
A backup can be created with any Bridge, including the old Hue Bridge. This backup is stored in the Hue Cloud for one year, so an account is required. The backup must be performed manually, and only one backup can be stored per Bridge at a time.
Restoring Backups Is Only Possible with the Hue Bridge Pro
A backup you’ve saved cannot be restored on the old, white Hue Bridge. It simply doesn’t have enough memory to complete the process reliably. Therefore, a Hue Bridge Pro is absolutely required for restoration.
The backup contains all data stored on the Hue Bridge—including, of course, that of the newly introduced products. This ranges from paired devices to all settings, whether scenes, switch configurations, or details such as SpatialAware and MotionAware.
The switches and lights, in particular, are the area that has caused such a long delay in the backup feature. This is because it’s not just a matter of individual devices, but rather a mesh network of Zigbee connections running in the background that must be properly reestablished. To do this, each individual light is disconnected from the previous bridge and then reconnected.
Restoring backups is possible not only on the same Hue Bridge Pro but also on a different Hue Bridge Pro. So, if the worst happens, you can simply replace any faulty hardware.
This data is not stored in the backup
Connections to external services, such as Amazon Alexa or Apple Home, are not included in the backup. The reason is quite simple: this data is not stored on the Hue Bridge (Pro), but is hosted by the external service. You’ll need to take care of this yourself after the restore.
In my opinion, “Backup & Restore” was long overdue. Although I’ve never had any issues with Philips Hue in all these years, I’ve received plenty of emails from desperate Hue users who had to manually rebuild their entire setup from scratch. That’s definitely no fun.
Hue Bridge Pro
$139.99 / €99.99
