Philips Hue Leaves Nest Smart Home

Philips Hue Leaves Nest Smart Home

Philips Hue Leaves Nest Smart Home

We've all known for a long time that the Works with Nest program was on its last legs, but now we're starting to see signs that its life support machine is shut down.

If you turn on the Philips Hue app, you may see a pop-up that says:

Philips Hue integration with Nest Thermostat, Nest Cam and Nest Protect will be discontinued starting November 17, 2020.

This will only be temporary, as Google is incorporating existing Works with Nest features into the Google Home app..

Philips Hue Leaves Nest Smart Home
Philips Hue Leaves Nest Smart Home

The fact that native synchronization Hue / Nest being retired isn't as big a deal as it would have been a few weeks ago, as Google recently added Home and Away presence detection routines to its smart home platform.

When Google removed Works with Nest last year, it effectively took some of the “smart ones”???? outside the smart home. Nest still has its Home/Away Assistant mode, which used geofencing to operate its Nest devices, but the integrations with other devices, such as turning off Hue lights when your Nest went into Away mode, are gone.

With the new Home and Away mode within Google Home routines, users can now do things like turn on Hue lights when everyone leaves the house.

More controls should be added back when the Works with Hey Google integration arrives. If it ever does... we've been waiting about 18 months for Google to properly replace Works with Nest.

Previously, the advice had always been to wait to migrate from a Nest account to a Google account, if you relied on Works with Nest integrations, but this warning from Hue indicates that waiting and waiting might not be an option for much longer.

The official Hue and Nest partnership was never a good one anyway, if we're being honest. It didn't let you specify which cameras affect which lights, or at what times, for example.

And the only Nest Cam automations offered are ones that automatically turn on lights if no one is detected in a room for a while; a 'smarter security light' that turns on random lights if it detects motion when it's dark (which inevitably activates when you don't want it to); and a snooze feature that turns lights on/off when Nest's Home/Away status is Away.

However, if you trusted it... you have a couple of weeks to set up some alternative automations.

Philips Hue Leaves Nest Smart Home Seen on