With the integration, Hue owners will be able to add lighting recipes to various Siri Shortcuts, such as shifting the lights in the dining room to a certain color with a Siri voice command like "Dinner Time," as demoed by Philips.
Siri Shortcuts is a Siri feature designed to allow users to create multi-step shortcuts using first and third-party apps that can be activated by Siri voice command.
Shortcuts are deeply customizable, and third party apps like the Hue app are able to develop quick actions for Siri that can be incorporated into Shortcuts recipes. When Hue integration launches, Hue options will be available in the dedicated Shortcuts app.
The Hue shortcuts will be compatible with other shortcuts, so you can have a whole "Dinner Time" setup that not only changes the lights, but also does things like turn on music and text family members that the food is ready.
Siri is able to suggest frequently used Shortcuts right on the iPhone's lock screen and Apple Watch, so if there are Hue-related lighting shortcuts that are often used, these options will be able to be implemented with a simple tap.
Right now, the Shortcuts app, which is what's used to create these Siri Shortcuts, is available to developers in a beta capacity, but it will be released when iOS 12 is released. Sometime after that, Philips will presumably implement Shortcuts support.
Philips today also announced a new power feature that's designed to allow Hue lights to retain their color and brightness settings after a power outage or after a lamp has been manually turned off, and the company is partnering with new lighting companies that include Makris, Kichler, Busch-Jaegar, Illumra, Koizumi, and John Lewis for its Friends of Hue program.
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