Here's why your Philips Hue smart lights keep resetting to 100% brightness and when a fix will be available

A Philips Hue A67 smart HomeKit lightbulb inside an overhead kitchen lamp.
(Image credit: Philips)

The Philips Hue line is one of the most popular collections of smart lights around, although they definitely aren't the cheapest. Support for HomeKit makes them a solid option for Apple device owners, but some Hue owners are now experiencing a bug that is sure to be pretty annoying.

That bug is causing some Hue bulbs to set their brightness to 100% of their own accord, making it harder for owners to configure them just the way that they like.

Setting the lights to a different brightness doesn't work, unfortunately, but the good news is that Philips Hue light maker Signify is aware of the issue and working on a fix.

What's the Matter?

The Verge reports that Hue confirmed the bug, admitting that a fix could be ready as soon as next week. The issue, it seems, is integration with Matter.

“After extensive analysis, we have identified an interoperability issue with the Matter smarthome standard, in which random temporary radio traffic disruptions are incorrectly recognized as legacy switch power toggles, turning low brightness lights to full brightness,” a Signify spokesperson told The Verge.

It isn't clear exactly what is going on or why this issue is affecting some users rather than others. But Signify does say that users can disable the Hue Bridge's Matter integration temporarily if they want to work around the bug while a fix is being worked on. Thankfully, the company says that the issue only affects “a small percentage of users.”

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Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.