The long-delayed feature could be ready soon
You’ve got more choices for smart lights than you probably have lights, and many of them are cheaper than Philips Hue. For my money, though, Hue is worth it. The “scene” ecosystem is part of why Hue lights are so popular. With a tap, you can change the character of your Hue lights to match your mood or the time of day. A recent app update revealed a new scene that matches your lights to the outside world, but as quickly as it was there, the Natural Light scene was snatched away… for now.
The company announced its Natural Light scene in 2021, hoping to have it ready to go by fall of that year. Alas, that didn’t happen, and there has not been an update since. According to HueBlog, a recent update to the app (version 4.22.0) made Natural Light accessible. It warned that the scene was still not done and could lead to unexpected behavior. The idea, if it works correctly, is that your light temperature will change throughout the day, starting cooler in the morning, getting brighter through lunchtime, and then dropping to a dimmer, warm color in the evening.
Unfortunately, the accidental reveal was fixed on the server side a few hours later. We do get a pretty good look at the feature, as seen above. The app language is set to German, but here’s a translation if the description, again courtesy of HueBlog.
Designed to help you stay productive and feel supported in your overall well-being, Natural light uses different shades of warm-to-cool white light to mimic the sun’s movement throughout the day. Your lights will automatically transition throughout the day: start with bright, cool tones to energise your mornings and end with a warmer, golden glow that helps you relax as the sun goes down.
The scene still works for anyone who managed to save it to their Hue hub before the fix rolled out. It includes six different blocks of time (five during the day and one at night), each with a different color temperature and brightness. It appears you’ll be able to adjust the settings as you like, once it’s saved to your Hue Hub. The only limitation is the periods have to be at least 30 minutes long. If you didn’t manage to save the Natural Light scene before it went away, it hopefully won’t be long before it rolls out for real.
