If you want to control your Hue lamps via your Mac, there is now another alternative in the Mac App Store: HueMenu (App Store link). As the name of the €3.99 app suggests, the application is located in the Mac’s menu bar and can be called up there with a simple mouse click.
I greet you one last time from Greece, which is quite windy today, before I return home tomorrow. One child is asleep, the other is at the mini-club – enough time for a little article for you. Today I would like to take a first look at Hue Log, a new Mac app by developer Stefan Pettersson.
Last Thursday, Philips Hue presented its new products, among them an adapted version of the Philips Hue Play Gradient Lightstrip, which was previously available for TVs in sizes of 55, 65 and 75 inches. Now the identical technology is being used for smaller monitors and is aimed primarily at gamers. Among other things, this has a decisive reason, but more on that later.
Earlier this week I was able to report that Hue Essentials is now also available for download in the Mac App Store. However, the new app wouldn’t start on our Macs – and we had no idea why. In the meantime, the developers from the Netherlands have found the error and fixed it: It was due to older versions of macOS.
If you no longer want to control your Philips Hue lights only by voice command or by app on iPhone and iPad, there is now another option: After the launch of the Windows application, the well-known app Hue Essentials is now also available for the Mac. The download from the Mac App Store is free of charge.
Even though I don’t use Hue Essentials myself, I am happy about this little announcement from the developers from the Netherlands. On Instagram, the team around Hue Essentials announced that the app will soon be released for the computer as well. “We have been working on both Windows and Mac releases,” they say.
Philips Hue is at home on the smartphone and tablet, there is no doubt about that. I use the Hue app almost exclusively on the iPhone, even on the iPad I hardly ever open the app. But there are certainly some users out there who would like to access the Hue app on the Mac.
In April I already gave you a short introduction to We Love Lights from the Mac App Store. The 3,49 Euro application is a practical extension for the menu bar to control the lamps from your Mac. After successfully connecting to the Bridge, an alphabetically sorted list of all rooms and zones appears, which can be used to control either the entire area or each individual lamp.
Do you know this problem as well? At home, you sit at your desk or anywhere else with your MacBook and you want to control the light. Of course you could stand up and use the dimmer switch or just use Siri on your Mac. But if you have your fingers on the trackpad anyway, you could also control the light on your Mac.
Fabian
Mel