LIFX rolls out new app for controlling smart lights on iOS and Android

If you use LIFX smart lights in your home, you may have noticed a revamped app interface for controlling those lights.

It started rolling out on iOS last week, and now the update is hitting Android devices as well. Dubbed ‘App 4’ on the LIFX website, the refreshed interface hopes to make it easier to control your lights so users can spend less time in the app and more time in their home. It also doesn’t hurt that the new interface looks quite a bit better.

To start, the new app reworks the LIFX home page into a new three-panel interface. The centre panel features the controls for all your lights sorted by the groups they belong to. Each card on this screen shows the room and the lights within. By default, there’s a cute illustration of the room, but users can customize each panel to display different illustrations, preset images or take their own room photos.

Old LIFX app (left) and new (right)

The group name resides in the top left corner, while the right side of the panel features a slider to adjust the brightness of the lights in a room. Tapping a card shrinks it and displays a toggle for each individual light so users can quickly turn lights on or off from the main screen.

Tapping the group’s name displays advanced controls, such as light brightness and temperature, colour, themes and a colour palette for picking colours. Users can also view the group’s settings to change the name, cover image and more. Finally, users can favourite lights from this screen for easy access later.

The new layout lets you quickly access Scenes, Effects and your schedules

A swipe to the left will show the Scenes and Effects users can apply to their lights. Swiping right shows schedules users set up and lets them edit those schedules. The app now divides schedules up by day and shows them on a timeline based on when they’ll happen.

These three home panels are all tied together by a bar at the top of the screen that lets users quickly turn off all the lights in their home, toggle between the panels and more.

At the bottom of the screen are new buttons as well. The leftmost is the ‘Home’ button, which takes you to the three panels for controlling your lights. Then there’s ‘Discover,’ which provides easy access to tutorials, such as how to use the new app, how to connect your lights with Google Assistant or Alexa, or links to the website to buy more lights.

The third button opens ‘Settings’ and the last is a ‘plus’ for adding new lights, schedules and Scenes.

All in all, the update is a significant improvement over the old LIFX app and should make it much easier to manage and control your smart bulbs, especially if you have a lot of them. However, as excellent as the new app is, LIFX says there’s more to come. On its website, the company notes that ‘App 4’ is just the “basecamp on a longer journey to ‘Peak App.'” In other words, expect more features and functionality to come in future updates.