Hey everyone - the time has come! Starting today, you can use Sonos Voice Control with Hue lights and smart plugs. Just speak to your voice-capable Sonos speakers to turn lights on or off, adjust brightness, change colors, or set a scene. The integration is supported in English (en-US) and French (fr-FR). 

From my own personal testing, there are a few things to call out for awareness. First - you’ll start this process in the Hue app, not the Sonos app. Equally important - make sure you have both apps first. Clicking the “Sonos Voice Control” button in the Hue app won’t open the Sonos app unless it has already been downloaded to your device. Both apps will also need to be up-to-date to proceed, and both systems will need up-to-date firmware as well. If you happen to use multiple Sonos or Hue accounts (as I occasionally do), make sure to log in to the correct account in both apps first. 

Setup Process

After updating, open the Hue app and go to Settings > Smart home > click the plus sign (+) in the upper right corner, then select “Sonos Voice Control”. This will take you to the Sonos app; follow the prompts to connect your Sonos system to the correct Hue Home (in case you have more than one), and you’re all set. If needed, you can also unlink Sonos Voice Control from the same “Smart home” section of the Hue app, or from the Hue website here.

Available Commands

All of the basic commands you’d expect are there, just start with “Hey Sonos” -
“turn on the lights in the kitchen,” “set the living room lights to 80%,” “turn the porch lights to blue.”, etc. You can also activate Hue scenes (“turn on my movie scene”), and if you use Hue smart plugs, you can turn them on or off with a voice command as well. 

If the room name in the Hue app matches the room name in the Sonos app, you can just say “turn on the lights” without including the room name. Nice! Otherwise, “turn on the lights” will turn on all of the lights, so make sure to include the room name when appropriate.

One thing to be aware of, turning off Hue scenes via SVC is not currently available. Also, if you have multiple devices with the same room name (such as a smart light, a smart plug, and a Sonos speaker) and tell Sonos “turn on the kitchen”, the lights will take priority. That way, it doesn’t also start playing music and turning on your smart plug. 

How It Works

One thing that’s pretty neat - once you’ve configured this integration (using an active internet connection), Sonos Voice Control will continue to work in an offline environment. Add that to the list 👏And for my fellow tech nerds that might be interested in this sort of thing, this all happens over an SSL-encrypted connection between your Sonos products and Hue Bridge, before being relayed over the Zigbee protocol to the lights and smart plugs. 

With that in mind, Sonos and Hue have to be able to communicate directly over the Local Area Network (LAN); you won’t be able to control a Hue light in your summer home remotely from the Sonos system at your primary residence, for example.

Other Details

Another thing to be aware of - changing room names can take up to 24 hours to sync between services. For example, voice commands might not work as expected immediately after changing a room name in the Hue app from “Living Room” to “Family Room”. It might be significantly faster than this…hours, or perhaps even minutes…but give it up to 24 hours and try again. 

Using multiple requests in one command (“turn the lights off in the kitchen and dim the lights in the living room”) isn’t supported, and scheduling still needs to be done in the Hue app (“turn the lights on at 6 am” won’t work as intended).

Sonos Voice Control will work with both Hue Bridge (v2) and Hue Bridge Pro, so those of us that have been using Hue for a minute can continue to use our existing setup. I haven’t tried out the Hue Bridge Pro yet, but based on what I’ve seen so far, I think I’m going to pick one up and give it a try.
 

Resources and Wrap-Up

All of this should be pretty straightforward, but I’ll be here to help if you have any questions or feedback. I’ve personally found myself using this feature daily, and I hope you enjoy it as well. Special thanks to our partners at Hue in this collaborative effort! 

As always, feel free to hit us up any time on Reddit chat with myself and the rest of TeamFromSonos. We appreciate the chance to be there in the sub and enjoy hearing from each of you directly.