Philips Hue upgrades its app with AR feature – but there’s a catch

Philips Hue has upgraded its app with a new AR feature that allows you to preview how their lights would look in your home. As reported by Hueblog, the app update also includes other new features, like do not disturb options and interactive 3D modelling – but there’s a catch.

Philips Hue is well known for its collection of the best smart bulbs, and its app allows you to control all the different lights you have via your smartphone or tablet. But the new 5.27 version of the Philips Hue app now has AR features that make it easier for you to see how Philips Hue lights will look in your home.

In the Philips Hue app’s Explore tab, you can test 12 different Philips Hue products in the rooms in your home, including the Hue Gradient Signe Floor Lamp, the Hue Twilight, the Hue Dymera, and the Hue Go Table to name a few. The new AR feature shows how the lamp will look in a room, and will show how it looks with different brightness, colours, effects and scenes.

To use the new feature, you simply decide on the lamp you want to see before the app uses its LiDAR sensor and your phone’s camera to place the lamp where you want to see it. The lamp can be moved around and customised to show different colour options, and you can also change the appearance of the room to see what the lamp would look like in the day and night.

So, what’s the catch? While the new Philips Hue app update is available on iOS, iPadOS and Android, the AR feature is limited to iPhone Pro and iPad Pro models that have a LiDAR sensor. For Android users and non-Pro iPhone / iPad owners, you won’t be able to use this feature.

But the Philips Hue app has also got some other exciting features that you might enjoy. A ‘do not disturb’ option is now available in the Hue app and it allows you to customise your products to only react to movements while all lights in a room are turned off. This is helpful for sensors and lights that you want to stay on, regardless of what it’s detecting and you can schedule the ‘do not disturb’ mode for certain times of the day.