The Philips Hue app can do a number of useful things with your Hue lights, including the ability to schedule your lights to turn on and off at specific times throughout the day. Here’s how to do it so you never have to hit the switch again.

RELATED: How to set up your Philips Hue Lights

This used to require the IFTTT service, but this year the new Philips Hue app introduced the Routines feature, and its main function is to schedule your Hue lights to turn on and off. This is a feature that has been missing for a very long time, but has finally appeared.

To get started, open the Philips Hue app on your smartphone and click the Routines tab at the bottom.

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On the next screen, select «My Procedures».

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Click on the round plus button at the bottom right corner of the screen.

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Click where it says «My Procedure 1» at the top and enter your name for the procedure you will create.

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Then under «When should this start?» Select the time you want the Hue light to turn on.

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Right below that, you can also select specific days of the week by clicking on one to select it.

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«Fade» is a function that can turn on the light slowly over a period of five minutes to 30 minutes. You can also just leave it at «Momentary» so your light turns on normally.

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Then click «Where?». With a routine, you can’t select individual hue bulbs, only rooms, so click on the checkbox next to a room to select it. You can select up to four rooms to enable this procedure.

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Return to the previous screen and you will see a new section added at the bottom. Click on it to choose how your light burns. You can choose from several default settings, such as turning the light on at full brightness, dimmed brightness, or a very dim brightness called Night Light. You can also scroll down and select a default scene or one you’ve created in the past.

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Once you’ve chosen one, you’ll be taken back to the main routine creation screen, where you’ll then click «Save» in the top right corner of the screen.

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Your new routine will appear in the list.

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Keep in mind that if you also want your lights to turn off automatically at a certain time, you’ll need to create a second procedure, only this time you’ll choose to have the lights turn off when you select a scene.

Plus, it’s pretty easy to set up lighting on a schedule, and we’re really happy that the Philips Hue app finally has this feature.

Header image by Maximusnd / Bigstock, NiroDesign / Bigstock and Philips.

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