iLightShow for Philips Hue

I was recently shown this app via the #AppAdvice daily recommendation. As most of my close friends know I simply love my #Phillip Hue lights and wanted to coordinate my extensive music 🎶 library with my Hue lights. I the initial free version permits limited lighting with the app, therefore if you’re a Hue light junkies like myself you will need to purchase the premium package to incorporate all your Phillips Hue lights. It’s not quite intuitive regarding the music library integration, however the app developer is very responsive and helpful and I was therefore able to achieve my desire effect, so much so that I upgrade to their Premium package, I’m truly a happy camper 🎶 💡

This really is a great app and I really enjoy how it interacts with my hue lights. There are only a couple issues (that I don’t believe have been addressed) that hold it back from a 5 star: 1) Buying premium isn’t that bad, not that expensive... but I can’t share across devices. I bought this on my phone and would like to share it with my wife and son. But I also don’t want to pay another $5 each to do so. If there was a way to share the premium feature then that would be fantastic. 2) This is the biggest drawback to me... the app doesn’t run in the background. If I leave the app or close my phone, everything stops working. It’s not realistic to think that I’ll leave my phone on for hours while listening to music or hosting a party. If this can be addressed then that would make this app a 5 star for me.

So I’ve been playing with this app for a few of days and my kids love it! We’ve had a dance party practically every night. It does exactly what it says and works pretty well with Apple Music. The biggest con is that to unlock more than one light you have to $4.99 in app purchase. You can’t really evaluate that app without paying for it. I didn’t mind spending the $5, EXCEPT, if my kids want it on all their devices I’ll have to pay on each one. Truth is I’ll hardly use this app, but my kids might, but I’m not sure it’s worth $20 to me. Maybe $10. The next problem is a lack of music controls within the app. If you want to pause, play or scrub your music you need to jump back to Apple Music. I think Apple made these controls available for developers to use. So adding these would be a convenient touch. Finally, this would make an outstanding APPLE TV app. The controls might need to be simplified, or possible use an iCloud shared preferences file (so the advanced settings are done on the phone/iPad), but this would be the best solution for me. The kids regularly play their dance part music on the TV.

First off, I will say the developer is extremely responsive to questions, which is unusual these days. After purchasing the app I’ve had two problems that potential buyers should be aware of: 1) Bluetooth streaming is problematic if your speaker has a microphone. Depending on which speaker I use the sound either cuts out entirely or drops volume / quality. The workaround to this is to disable the microphone use in the app, but after doing so I can’t seem to get the light timing right. 2) Does not work with family sharing. I have a family of 5 and thought this app would be good for the family to use to control lights in the house. I was willing to pay $5 for that functionality, but since the funds are paid via an in app purchase they don’t transfer to family members, meaning nobody else in the family can control them. I guess I should have been more aware of this before purchasing, but it’s a very disappointing pricing model, especially given the Bluetooth issues. Overall this isn’t meeting my desired use at the moment and wouldn’t buy again had I known more up front.

My only complaint is that the apps loses synchronization pretty easily if the app isn’t left open but I understand Apple doesn’t exactly let developers run things like that in the background so I can’t blame the developer. Some things I’d love to see in the future would be support for Nanoleaf light panels, the option to make a certain preset into a HomeKit scene so I can activate it using Siri or a Siri Shortcut, an Apple TV version of this app, and even more lighting controls. You've done a great job on this app already though Nicolas! Glad to see the app is still being updated and improved.