Hue Essentials Mac: Your Guide to Easy Light Control

So, the other day, I was messing around with my smart lights, you know, the ones you can control with your phone and stuff. I’ve got these Philips Hue lights, and they’re pretty cool, but I wanted to see if I could control them from my Mac too. Turns out, there’s this app called Hue Essentials that lets you do just that.

I did some digging around, and apparently, it’s not as straightforward as just downloading an app from the App Store. You need to do a bit of a workaround. I found out that you can actually use the Apple Home app on your iPhone (or you can download it if you don’t have it). Anyway, I opened up the Home app and started poking around.

The first thing I had to do was connect my Hue lights to the app. Now, there are a few ways to do this, like using ZigBee, Bluetooth, or WiFi. I just went with the easiest option, which was using something called Touchlink. I opened up Hue Essentials on my phone, went to the “Devices” section, and tapped the little plus button. Then I chose “Light” (or “Plug” if you have a smart plug), and selected my bridge.

• Open Hue Essentials and go to Devices
• Tap the + button
• Tap Light (or Plug)
• Select your bridge

Next, I had to turn my light off and on again. It sounds weird, but that’s what the instructions said. Then, I held my light close to the Philips Hue bridge. It took a few seconds, but eventually, the app found my light, and I was able to add it. Now that was easy and fast. I can control all my lights by my phone now.

But I still wanted to control them from my Mac, right? I discovered that there’s another app called HueMenu. It had a new version released not too long ago. I found some info saying that developers have been able to mess with Hue lights since way back in 2013, so it makes sense that someone would create a Mac app for it.

Control my Hue lamps via Mac

But here’s the tricky part: the Hue app isn’t officially available for Mac. So, I had to install the app on my Mac using some kind of workaround. It involved downloading the app file and then opening it in a special way. It was a bit of a hassle, but I managed to get it working. Maybe it is not the offical way, but it works.

Once I had the Hue app running on my Mac, I could finally control my lights from my computer! I could turn them on and off, change the colors, adjust the brightness, all that good stuff. It was pretty satisfying to finally get it all set up.

Oh, and one more thing! I also figured out how to use Alexa to control my lights. Once you connect Alexa to your Hue bulbs, you can just use voice commands. Like, I can say, “Alexa, turn off the lights in the kitchen,” or “Alexa, dim the lights in my bedroom to 50%.” And if you have colored lights, you can even tell Alexa to change the colors. It’s pretty neat, if you ask me.

So yeah, that’s how I got my Hue lights working with my Mac and Alexa. It took a little bit of effort, but it was worth it in the end. Now I can control my lights from pretty much anywhere, which is super convenient. Hope this little adventure of mine helps someone out there trying to do the same thing! If my grandma can do it, then you guys can do it too!