How to create mood lighting with the Google Home app

Google has slowly but surely turned the Google Home app into a centralized control hub. If you have not opened the application recently, you may not have noticed the number of new features and settings available. The most recent of these new features is the ability to tweak the colors of your home smart lights natively in the Google Home app – a thing that has been remarkably absent despite the application's brightness adjustment settings and other smart features.

Technically, it was previously possible to change the color of a smart lamp using third-party applications from Philips, LIFX, etc., but you had to use the appropriate application for each brand of lamp you had installed or in some cases, the voice commands of Google Assistant. . The new Google Home Light Control setting, however, removes the need for these third-party applications. Google Home users can now change the color of each bulb connected to their home in Google Home in the same way that the app allows them to control the brightness of their smart bulbs. Here's how to access the new color lighting settings in the Google Home app.

How to change your smart home bulbs in the Google Home app

1. Update the Google Home app if you need it. The easiest way to verify this is to open the Google Play Store page of the app and check if an update is pending. You will need to use version 2.9 of the application.
2. Open the Google Home app and select the individual room or lighting you want to change the color (follow the Google installation guide if you have not connected your smart devices / lights compatible).
3. Tap the "Color" setting in the Lights menu, and then select the specific color you want to skip.

The new color changing possibilities of the Google Home app are subject to some limitations. Unlike the full RGB light control achieved with the Philips and LIFX apps, the Google Home app only offers predefined colors. This seems like a strange decision, especially since full RGB control is available elsewhere. Similarly, if the app tells you if a specific light is on or off and what its brightness level is, it does not display the current color of each bulb, which means you may need to play a guessing game. handle a lot of bulbs. In all honesty, the collection of 42 colors available offers a respectable variety of shades between which you can change. You can avoid guessing which bulb you should change if you assign them clear and specific labels, but these are nevertheless strange limitations.

Aside from these features, the color swap feature will be a great choice for Google Home users who prefer to control as many smart devices as possible from a single application.

Once you've set the mood lighting, you may want to check out the many other things your app and your Google Home devices can do, such as setting up your smart devices for home so that they automatically calm down at night.