Juggling multiple Philips Hue hubs is about to get easier

It’s surprisingly easy to wind up with more than 50 Philips Hue lights in your home, and that’s a problem given that the Philips Hue Bridge can only handle so many Hue products at once. 

The good news is that Hue users will soon be able to add multiple bridges to a single Hue account, a change that will—hopefully, anyway—make it easier to juggle additional Hue hubs. 

As spotted by HueBlog.com, an update on the official Philips Hue blog says that later in 2024, Hue users will “be able to add multiple Bridges to one account and sort them into Homes to keep your system organized.” 

Reached by TechHive, a Philips Hue spokesperson confirmed the update is coming, but didn’t add any details. 

The Philips Hue bridge has a “soft” cap of 50 lights plus 12 accessories, such as motion sensors, dimmer switches, and other Hue devices, including the newly released Hue Secure cameras. (You can actually add more devices, but reliability takes a hit once you exceed the official limit.) 

A solution to Hue’s device cap is to add more Hue Bridges to your home, and a software update in 2011 added the ability to quickly switch between two bridges within the Hue app.

But even with two or more Hue Bridges in your home, there’s still a virtual wall between the Hue devices on one bridge and the Hue devices on another. That means you can’t tap a button to control all your Hue lights across two bridges simultaneously, nor can a single automation include Hue lights across both bridges.   

Also, if you have more than one Hue Bridge at home, you can only sign in to one of them with your (now mandatory) Hue account; the others must be controlled locally. 

There are workarounds, such as third-party apps like iConnectHue that seamlessly support two Hue bridges. Apple’s HomeKit platform will also let you add and control multiple Hue bridges at once. Still, it’s annoying that the official Hue app only allows you to control one Hue bridge at a time. 

But that should finally change once the Hue update lands later this year–and with the update, we’re hopeful that devices assigned to multiple Hue Bridges will finally be able to mingle in the Hue app, including within rooms and automations.  

Once that happens, it’ll be easier to add as many Hue devices to your home as your heart desires–or at least, as many as your wallet will allow.