I do have the Hue widget and use it sometimes, but for some reason I cannot train my brain to swipe over to the widget and use it. I also like a clean widget screen. I try to keep only 3-4 in there so I don’t have to scroll and it’s mostly taken up by my calendar at the moment.
Plus, with the above Shortcuts I can create any combination of groups I would like whereas the Hue app only allows a light to be in one group at a time.
Finally, the biggest driving factor for this was to tell a light or group to fade starting “now” (on demand). The Hue app has timers, and nighttime/morning routines, but none of them can be triggered on demand. For my kids, I always had to go into the app, tap routines, tap go to sleep, find the one I want, tap it, edit the time to fit the current time. The Shortcuts above, you can tap a light/group and choose a fade duration and you’re done.
