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macinct

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 21, 2018
12
36
Hope this is a simple problem of me just not understanding how automation works for Homekit and various products. Can someone please clarify how HomeKit works with, for example, say Hue bulbs. If I set up my Hue lights thru the Hue app to turn on at sunset and also set Homekit to have the same lights turn on at sunset, which app is actually controlling the lights? If I want to use Homekit exclusively do I need to turn off all the automations in the Hue app? Thanks in advance.
 

Itinj24

Contributor
Nov 8, 2017
4,474
2,560
New York
Your best bet would be to use one or the other and this case I’d recommend doing it in the HomeKit app. That’s actually one of the main points of a platform like HomeKit. To take a bunch of third party manufacturers with otherwise no integration and stitch them together to work in harmony. It wouldn’t be efficient to have to manage a bunch of different apps. To answer your question, precedence would probably be given to the app that determines sunset first and yes it would be best to turn off automations in the third party apps so there’s no conflict. I only use third party apps for notifications and firmware updates. If you feel the need to keep identical automations on in both the Hue and Home app, it’s doesn’t really matter. If Hue sets the automation to turn the lights on at sunset first, HomeKit will attempt the same thing but they’ll already be on so no change.
I highly recommend the Eve or Home+ 4 apps for automations. They’re a lot more robust than HomeKit and they still show up in HomeKit. They have a two way communication.
 
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