Homey’s new smart light update is a game-changer for your mismatched smart home
Your Homey smart home hub received a major upgrade today with Moods – a new way to control your smart home lights.
Simply launch your Homey app, tap the plus icon in the top right corner of the My Home tab and tap New Mood. You can then select the bulbs you want to add, set the mood you want by changing the color and brightness of your smart bulbs, and then save your custom configuration. Alternatively, you can select one of Homey’s many preset moods if you’re not sure where to start.
Moods went live today for both the free and premium Homey service, as well as Homey Pro (2023 model) with the Homey Pro v11.0 and the Homey app v8.2 updates.
If you own an older Homey Pro hub, you won’t be locked out forever, as Homey has said the option to unlock Moods will become available later this year for a one-off purchase of €10 (approximately $10 / £9).
Isn’t this already a thing?
We know what you’re thinking – this kind of mood lighting control has been a common feature for smart bulbs for a while now, so why is Homey’s announcement important? The advantage of Homey’s version of the function is that you can synchronize your mood settings from different brands of smart lamps with one command.
Let’s say your living room is equipped with a combination of Philips Hue, Nanoleaf and Govee bulbs – all of which feature in our best smart lighting guide. Instead of having to set the lights manually in the individual apps (or with three separate voice commands), you can simply use your Homey hub to set everything up in one go.
Those of you with a lot of smart home technology can take it a step further with a Flow that would include a wider range of devices. An example that Homey gives in his press release ‘Movie Time’ is, this mood can not only dim the lights in your living room, but also automatically close your curtains and turn on your TV.
These types of improved third-party hub controls make it easier to justify not sticking with one smart home brand just because that’s the first product you bought. You can choose the smart gadgets that best suit your needs and not worry about losing synergy because you decided to mix and match.
In our view, this is a big victory and we hope that Homey’s service will only continue to improve in the future.