What's new in Hue-topia 4.0.0 Beta
Jun 27, 2023
- Presets are now Scenes. The scenes list is a nice alternative to the detailed manual control (click to select a scene appropriate for the mood or time of day, using manual controls for creating those scenes). HT4 allows you to add your own photograph / icon to represent a scene.
- Uses newer parts of the API, such as 'localtime' rather than 'time'. These changes tend to make HT less complex and more likely to work as expected.
- Sunrise and Sunset functionality used to be managed pretty heavily by HT. It calculated times using your location, allowed you to select from the various definitions of sunset/sunrise, and could alter scheduled times on the bridge accordingly. Now the Hue Bridge has its own daylight functionality with configurable offsets and it's more appropriate to make use of that. (not yet implemented in the v4 beta).
- Support for sensors. The motion sensor, besides detecting motion and having a little configurability, also has a temperature sensor which can be viewed in HT4.
- Effects and the effects designer are no longer a feature of Hue-topia. We feel it's more appropriate for this functionality to form a separate app, which we'll do if people ask.
New in Hue-topia 3.4.2 (Aug 20, 2020)
- Only updates the licensing framework. This isn't an important release for licensed users who have 3.4.1
New in Hue-topia 3.4.1 (Jul 24, 2020)
- Small update to bridge discovery address (Philips had changed the url). Fixes bridge discovery on startup. While broken it was necessary to enter bridge address manually.
New in Hue-topia 3.4.0 (Jun 5, 2019)
- Improvements to Applescript functionality. Should be more responsive and reliable.
- Application is Notarized by Apple as from version 3.4.0
New in Hue-topia 3.3.1 (Jan 9, 2019)
- If location services is switched off, or permission hasn't been given for Hue-topia to access the user's location, and the user tries to switch on 'Link times to sunrise / sunset' then the schedule dialog closes elegantly and information is shown. Previously the window would hang with no explanation.
- Fixes crash experienced on newer versions of MacOS when running HT for the first time, immediately after pressing the bridge button.
New in Hue-topia 3.3.0 (Jan 9, 2019)
- The update check no longer able to perform the download, which has been problematic for security reasons. Instead visits application home page where the download can be made
- Adds preference relating to groups:
- Using a group's on/off button also makes the settings of all lamps in the group consistent
New in Hue-topia 3.2.2 (Jan 9, 2019)
- If manual controller (main window) is closed, clicking dock icon or double-clicking application icon will re-open the controller window
- Fixes bug - if lamp was in colour-temperature mode, sliding the 'brightness' slider would cause it to revert back to hsb (colour) mode
New in Hue-topia 3.2.1 (Sep 20, 2018)
- dark-mode-ready for MacOs 10.14 Mojave (will respect the user's choice of dark or light mode in System Preferences)
- Fixes small bug causing colours used in an effect to become slightly more saturated each time the effect is opened and closed
- Fixes problem with the schedule window causing the controls to change colour / brightness to not always be visible when they should be
New in Hue-topia 3.2.0 (Sep 20, 2018)
- Interface improvements:
- The on/off button for each lamp/group indicates more clearly whether the lamp is on at low brightness or off (Button goes darker when lamp is off, in light and dark modes.)
- The sliders for warmth, whiteness and brightness have graduated coloured backgrounds to indicate what will happen if you move them in a particular direction
- Warmth and whiteness sliders are completely hidden if the lamp doesn't have those capabilities
New in Hue-topia 3.1.1 (Sep 20, 2018)
- Enables dark mode when using MacOs 10.14 Mojave (will respect the user's choice of dark or light mode in System Preferences)
- Fixes crash when switching to Schedules > Chart when using the new system
- Improves the on/off button for each lamp / group, makes it more obvious (in dark mode) whether the lamp is off or on at low brightness
New in Hue-topia 3.1.0 (Sep 20, 2018)
- Links the frequency of updates while using continuous sliding controls (eg brightness slider) to the heartbeat speed as set in Preferences
- ^ if the sliders have a long delay before you see the change (seconds) then too many messages are being sent to and from the bridge. Turn down the heartbeat Speed
- heartbeat speed default value is set at a slightly higher value for new users
- changes urls within the app and the dmg (eg support, EULA) to new https site
New in Hue-topia 3.0.10 (Jan 17, 2018)
- Adds 'Turn all off' and 'Turn all on' to status bar menu, preset submenu
- Fix to 'Turn all off' and 'Turn all on' in hotkeys
- If an effect is running, and user switches lamp/group off (or selects a preset that results in the lamp switching off) then effect is stopped. Previously the effect continued running which could switch the lamp back on.
New in Hue-topia 3.0.9 (Jan 17, 2018)
- Adds drag and drop functionality to colour indicators. You can drag a colour from one lamp to another, or from a lamp to a group. This makes it easy to find a colour you like and then propagate that colour to a group or all lamps. The colour temperature functionality is supported in this.
- Fixes a problem where a group or location containing only dimmable lamps (ie which don't display colours) were displaying a red colour in HT rather than white
New in Hue-topia 3.0.8 (Jan 4, 2018)
- Some glitches in the interface tidied up.
- Custom 'About' box added, it contains licensing information
New in Hue-topia 3.0.7 (Dec 15, 2017)
- Adds export and import for settings, for use when moving computers and wanting to migrate existing schedules, presets, effects and some settings
- Adds 'are you sure?' checks to deletion of effects and schedules
- Updates the default implementations of 'false dawn' and 'false dusk' to take advantage of the fact that effects now handle warmth values
- Existing users can load these updated effects by deleting the original ones and quitting & restartingLIFXstyle
- Fixes a crash on startup experienced by some in earlier versions of this beta
- Other small fixes
New in Hue-topia 3.0.5 Beta (Dec 8, 2017)
- Adds much better 'navigation' allowing you to choose control strips for lamps / groups / rooms / all
- Adds a new minimalist layout plus button in the toolbar for switching layouts
- Adds custom colour picker, geared towards smartbulbs. This includes the option of full colour or whites
- Adds colour temperature functionality - adds 'warmth' control to each strip, optionally switches between colour temp mode and full colour mode
- Improved status bar menu, shows on/off state of lamps / groups at a glance. Possible to switch lamps on/off from that menu, and select presets as before
- Adds scrollwheel functionality, use scrollwheel within colourwells to dim up / down
- Adds a number of preference options for various behaviours
- Effects designer is enhanced in a number of ways. And the 'effects' icon within control strips animates to indicate where an effect is running
- Many other small enhancements
New in Hue-topia 2.0.2 (Nov 3, 2017)
- Takes v2 out of beta, which adds the effects designer. As well as adding a tool for designing cycling effects, it also replaces the old 'false dawn', 'false dusk' (there are built-in effects for those things, which you can edit and have much more flexibility over the settings for those)
- Fixes problem preventing Hue-topia from automatically discovering the bridge IP properly (problem would have begun occurring on 2 Nov 17 due to slight change in the format of the information returned when HT requests the address of the bridge)
- Adds 'View' button in toolbar allowing you to choose the layout (this option was available before but hidden in the menus)
New in Hue-topia 1.11 (Nov 14, 2016)
- Supports Hue's new 'rooms' concept. Previous versions show Groups and Rooms as Groups. Now Hue-topia clearly shows Rooms with a room icon.
- Adds preference to show Groups but not Rooms in Hue-topia.
New in Hue-topia 1.10.2 (Nov 14, 2016)
- Fixes problem with the transition time for scheduled presets
New in Hue-topia 1.10.1 (Nov 14, 2016)
- Fixes hang when visualising schedules (gantt chart) for users upgrading from an earlier version of HT than 1.9 with existing schedules
- Fixes a problem with the logic of bridge login which was causing the 'please press button on your bridge' message to not appear or appear sporadically, so some users didn't know that HT was waiting for the bridge button to be pressed and thus had appeared to hang.
New in Hue-topia 1.10 (Nov 14, 2016)
- Adds 'Chart' option for visualising schedules (gantt chart).
New in Hue-topia 1.9.5 (Apr 14, 2015)
- Improves sunrise/sunset lookup for more accurate times - or at least corresponding with more of the online services
- Adds option to preferences: 'only show groups, not individual lamps' - allows users with many lamps to have a cleaner control panel
- Adds DST check and updates schedules on bridge when DST changes
- Fixes Schedule 'link to sunrise/sunset' button not showing when action is 'trigger preset'
- Adds button for Bridge Explorer in Preferences > Bridge (Was and still is also under View menu)
- Fixes bug - Bridge Explorer would display properly first time, but problem (crash, hang or just no action) when accessed second time
New in Hue-topia 1.9.3 (Feb 23, 2015)
- Fixes problem with strips forgetting re-ordering after certain actions (actions which change the number of strips such as make / delete group)
- Adds a grippie in the corner of the strips to indicate that they can be dragged to reorder, and provide a convenient handle
New in Hue-topia 1.9.2 (Feb 11, 2015)
- Fixes 'Hue-topia preventing restart' problem
- Improves auto update check
New in Hue-topia 1.9.1 (Jan 30, 2015)
- Hotkey preferences are now updated when a preset is renamed
- Improves and fixes problem with sunrise/sunset times - was sometimes failing to acquire user's location but was still requesting times for an incorrect location - therefore times could appear quite wrong.
- Warns if user saves a schedule with a logical inconsistency, eg 'trigger preset' as the action but a group or lamp selected rather than a preset. The buttons themselves do try to prevent this with certain permutations.
New in Hue-topia 1.9 (Jan 22, 2015)
- Adds ability to edit which lamps are affected or left unaffected by a preset (Manage presets from the toolbar button or Lights menu, then select preset and press 'Lamps affected)
- Adds ability to schedule presets (requires bridge software at least v1.1)
- Adds 'manage presets...' to Lamps menu
New in Hue-topia 1.8.2 (Jan 22, 2015)
- Improves scripting - allows access to lamps within a group. Documentation updated at http://peacockmedia-software.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/scripting-to-create-effects-with-your.html
- Adds preference to hide dock icon
New in Hue-topia 1.8.1 (Dec 9, 2014)
- Improves scripting - allows control of lamps and groups. Documentation at http://peacockmedia-software.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/scripting-to-create-effects-with-your.html
- Adds checkmark to selected Layout menu item to clear up the ambiguity of horizontal / vertical
- Fixes a bug causing sunrise/sunset times to be out by an hour
- changes price to $15 / ~£10
New in Hue-topia 1.8 (Nov 11, 2014)
- Allows dragging and dropping of control strips into the order you like (in both classic and horizontal views)
New in Hue-topia 1.7.2 (Nov 5, 2014)
- Fixes some licensing problems; some downloads ran freely without the regular licensing functionality.
New in Hue-topia 1.7.1 (Oct 10, 2014)
- Adds scripting support. Access your presets plus 'All on', 'All off' and 'All blink'
- Fixes random crash after running for a while (related to saving of bridge errors)
- Improves sunset / sunrise functionality:
- User can choose whether lamps switch on or off at sunrise / sunset
- User can choose to use actual sunrise/set time or the various twilights
New in Hue-topia 1.7 (Oct 1, 2014)
- Improvements to control panel:
- Adds ability to switch layout (View > Layout...) adds 'Horizontal' layout along with the 'Classic' layout (more layouts to follow)
- Allows resizing of the control panel window and scrolling of strips in directions appropriate to the current layout
- Control panel window is constrained to the screen dimensions with horizontal or vertical scrolling appearing as appropriate
New in Hue-topia 1.6.5 (Sep 15, 2014)
- Adds 'Edit group' for changing the lights in a group
- Changes 'Delete group' to a menu system to match the new 'Edit group'
New in Hue-topia 1.6.4 (Sep 1, 2014)
- Fixes memory leaks
- Improves bridge error reporting system; user isn't alerted to occasional one-off errors which are not unusual, only by more frequent problems
- if a lamp is off, brightness/whiteness/colour sliders will no longer attempt to send instructions to the bridge - pointless because bridge only returns an error
New in Hue-topia 1.6.3 (Aug 30, 2014)
- Improves error reporting (via View>Bridge warnings, cmd-4)
- Adds ability to switch off bridge warnings (Preferences > Don't show bridge warning)
- Improves handling of unresponsive bridge (previously, app appeared to hang)
New in Hue-topia 1.6.2 (Aug 11, 2014)
- Adds new-style colour picker to Action window
- Prevents instructions from being sent to the bridge more than 10 times per second when continuous-action sliders and colour pickers are being used. Sliders being moved quickly was causing bridge error 503 to be sent to the Console (although user would have been unaware of a problem)
- Fixes bug causing colour picker to stop working after choosing colours in certain ways
- Now correctly hides brightness and saturation sliders when opening a scheduled false dawn
New in Hue-topia 1.6.1 (Aug 9, 2014)
- Adds support for non-ascii characters in lamp and group names
- Improves the colour indicators - colour more closely resembles the colour of the bulb
New in Hue-topia 1.6 (Aug 4, 2014)
- Adds 'badge' to dock icon showing number of bulbs lit. Switch this feature on / off in Preferences > General
- Adds standard colour picker to each control strip - allows you to store your favourite colours, drag and drop colours between bulbs etc etc
- Previous rotating colour knob is still available if you prefer it - Preferences > General > Colour
- Adds 'Touchlink' command under Lights menu. An alternative to LampStealer, connects bulbs that have previously been paired with a different bridge
- Sliders for brightness, whiteness and the new colour picker work continuously rather than only operating when you 'let go'
- increases the frequency that the bridge is polled ('heartbeat') so certain kinds of update are faster and the UI looks a little more responsive
- Switches to Paddle licensing system. Will pick up and honour existing licences
- Tested and supported on OSX 10.10 Yosemite
New in Hue-topia 1.5 (Jul 16, 2014)
- Access your presets quickly using F-keys (with or without modifier)
- Preferences window remembers its position
New in Hue-topia 1.4.3 (Jun 9, 2014)
New in Hue-topia 1.4.2 (Jun 4, 2014)
- Adds support for Bloom, LivingColours and LivingWhite lamps (if already connected to your bridge)
New in Hue-topia 1.4.1 (May 29, 2014)
- Fixes problem with the status bar menu
- Fixes problem with schedules involving 'all lamps' where user has the 'all' group switched off
- Other small fixes relating to schedules. Users might open and close existing schedules if the schedule isn't operating the expected lamps
New in Hue-topia 1.4 (May 23, 2014)
- New features:
- Able to link on/off times to sunrise/sunset - off an hour after sunrise / on an hour before sunset (uses location services to find the times, OSX will ask whether you want to enable location services, feature will obviously only work if you agree)
New in Hue-topia 1.3.5 (Apr 10, 2014)
- Adds 'import from bridge' - to import any schedules from bridge that weren't originally created by Hue-topia (they can be browsed first using the bridge explorer)
- NB scheduled times may appear to be different on the bridge and within Huetopia because the bridge internally stores time as UTC but Hue-topia and other apps display and handle time in the local time
- Corrects incorrect percentage being displayed for brightness in the list of schedules (in the table, not the editor popup)
- Fixes bug causing brightness/color sliders not to show in schedule popup for actions which are set to 'Change brightness & color'
- Color, brightness, whiteness defaults for a new action are explicitly set to appropriate values
New in Hue-topia 1.3.4 (Apr 3, 2014)
- Solves a problem with launching on 10.7
New in Hue-topia 1.3.3 (Mar 25, 2014)
- Improves bridge connecting
- Improves error reporting where there are problems connecting
- Adds Bridge IP to Settings window, allows IP to be entered manually when there are problems discovering bridge
- Handles more than one bridge found on local network (previously caused Hue-topia to fail)
New in Hue-topia 1.3.2 (Mar 17, 2014)
- Fixes problem with renaming presets
- Fixes problem with app becoming unresponsive after Licence reminder has been displayed for the second time (once per 24hrs)
- Adds ability to 'fold' control strips to help manage a large number of lamps (feature needs to be switched on)
- Adds transition time to presets - default time set in Settings/Preferences, individual times for each preset set in 'Manage Presets'
New in Hue-topia 1.3.1 (Mar 17, 2014)
- Adds refresh button to bridge explorer
- Fixes a cause of a very occasional random crash
New in Hue-topia 1.3 (Feb 28, 2014)
- Adds 'False dawn' and 'False dusk' which can be scheduled or started manually (just dusk) for lamps or groups
- Adds transition time for false dusk / dawn to Preferences. Default is 30 minutes, which starts from the scheduled time
- Adds 'Bridge explorer' (View > Bridge Explorer or cmd-3) allows user to browse the contents of the bridge
- Adds 'Show Manual Control' to status bar menu
- Fixes bug causing unexpected results with schedules in the previous version
- Adds link to tutorial under Help menu
- NOTE: There is a bug with false dusk which seems to lie with certain older bulbs (swversion 65003148 - you can check using the new Bridge Explorer in Hue-topia) - those bulbs sometimes (not always) switch off quickly regardless of the transition time. False dawn seems to work fine. Suggest switching your bulbs around if you have any of the newer ones (swversion 66009663) so that the newer ones are in the place(s) where you'll use the false dusk.
New in Hue-topia 1.2.2 (Feb 24, 2014)
- Fixes a bug causing problems to some users when connecting to the bridge for the first time
New in Hue-topia 1.2.1 (Feb 11, 2014)
- Fixes and improvements:
- Groups update themselves based on the status of the lamps in the group
- adjusting the brightness / whiteness / colour of a group now switches the group on. Previously altering the controls did nothing unless the group was switched on
- Removes 'brushed metal' look from manual control panel
- Adds Activation functionality, key £4.95
- Fixes problems related to brightness and saturation sliders in schedule popup
New in Hue-topia 1.1 Beta (Jan 6, 2014)
- Many fixes and improvements:
- Fixes 'start and stop listening' scheduled events happening at random times if the computer has been asleep
- Fixes bug causing problems with incorrect checkboxes being checked when an existing action is opened
- Adds preference 'Show a group for All lights'. Adds tabbed view to Preferences window
- Reorganises menus, adds 'Start listening', 'Stop listening', 'All on' and 'All off' to menus
- Better keyboard control, cmd-A = All on, cmd-shift-A = All off, cmd-L = Start listening, cmd-Shift-L = Stop listening
- Built for 10.7 (Lion) upwards (first beta 10.8 and up) and also 32 as well as 64-bit intel macs
- Fixes starts listening on schedule even if item is disabled in schedules
- Fixes action colour slider working in reverse
- Fixes bug - 'actions on bridge' message showing after you'd removed them