Homey’s new smart light update is a game-changer for your mismatched smart home

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Your Homey smart home hub just got a major upgrade today with Moods – a new way to control your smart home lights.

Simply boot up your Homey app, tap the plus icon in the top right corner of the My Home tab, and tap New Mood. You can then select the lights you want to include, set the ambience you prefer by altering the color and brightness of your smart bulbs, and then save your custom setup. Alternatively, you can select one of Homey’s many preset Moods if you aren’t sure where to start.

Moods have gone live today for both the Free and Premium Homey service, as well as Homey Pro (2023 model) with the Homey Pro v11.0 and the Homey app v8.2 updates.

If you own an older Homey Pro hub then you won’t be left out forever, as Homey has said that the option to unlock Moods will be arriving later this year for a one-time purchase of €10 (around $10 / £9).

Isn’t this already a thing?

We know what you’re thinking – this kind of mood lighting control has been a common feature for smart lights for a while, so why is Homey’s announcement important? Well, the advantage of Homey’s version of the feature is you can sync up your mood settings across different smart bulb brands with one command.

Let’s say your living room is kitted out with a mixture of Philips Hue, Nanoleaf and Govee lights – all of which feature on our best smart lights guide. Rather than having to manually set the bulbs in their individual apps (or with three separate voice commands) you can simply use your Homey hub to set everything at once.

Those of you with a lot of smart home tech can take things one step further with a Flow which would incorporate a wider array of devices. One example Homey gives in its press release is “Movie Time,” this Mood may not only dim your living room’s lights, but automatically close your curtains and switch your TV on.

This kind of improved third-party hub controls make it easier to justify not sticking with one smart home brand just because that’s the first product you bought. You can pick up the smart gadgets that best suit your needs and not have to worry about losing out on synergy because you’ve decided to mix and match.

In our eyes, that’s a big win, and we hope that Homey’s service only continues to improve in the future.

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