How to control smart lights and plugs from your iPhone: Home Assistant, Shelly or Philips Hue?

Smart lights and plugs rarely arrive in one box from one brand. A Hue starter kit in the living room, a Shelly relay behind the hallway switch, a plug from a third brand on the heater. Each one comes with its own app, and after a while turning the lights off means opening three apps.

The fix is not another hub. It is understanding how each device can be reached from your phone and picking the route that matches what you already have. Remotly supports three of them, and this guide explains what each needs, what it can control and where its limits are.

First, find out how your devices are reachable

A device can be controlled only through the service it actually exposes, never by brand name alone. Before installing anything, sort your devices into three groups.

• Philips Hue lights talk through a Hue bridge on your local network. If your lamps pair with the Hue app and the bridge sits next to the router, this is your route.
• Shelly Gen2+ devices (switches, dimmers, RGB and RGBW lights, covers) expose a local control interface on your Wi-Fi. Gen1 devices do not and are not supported.
• Everything else, from plugs, climate and curtains to vacuums, fans and locks, can be reached through a Home Assistant server if you run one. Home Assistant integrates the brand; Remotly imports what the server exposes.
• Devices that only exist in a cloud app with no local interface, and ecosystems such as Matter, SmartThings, Tuya and Nest, are not supported directly.

Route 1: Philips Hue through the bridge

This is the simplest setup if you already own Hue. Remotly finds the bridge on the local network and pairs with it the same way the Hue app does, with the physical link button.

1. In Remotly, open My devices, tap Add device and choose Philips Hue. Bridges on your network appear; if yours does not, enter its address.
2. Press the link button on top of the bridge, then select the bridge again in Remotly.
3. Your Hue lights appear with on/off, brightness, color and color temperature, exactly as each lamp reports them. A white-only bulb gets no color picker.

Remotly verifies the bridge certificate before sending anything, refuses plain HTTP addresses and never uses the Hue cloud. Forget Hue bridge removes the stored application key. Because the connection is local, your phone needs to be on the same network as the bridge.

Route 2: Shelly Gen2+ on the local network

Shelly relays and dimmers usually live behind a wall switch or inside a junction box, which is exactly why a phone app is convenient. Gen2+ devices run a local RPC service, and Remotly talks to it directly.

1. Choose Shelly under Add device. Devices on your Wi-Fi appear automatically; you can also enter a device address.
2. If the device has a password, enter it once. It is stored in the iOS Keychain.
3. Each switch, light or cover channel appears as its own device with the controls it reports: on/off for relays, brightness for dimmable lights, color for RGB and RGBW models, and a position slider only on covers that have been calibrated.

Status is live from the device's own RPC channel, so the state you see in Remotly reflects what the physical button did. Like Hue, this route is local-network only.

Route 3: Home Assistant for everything else

If you run Home Assistant, it is probably already talking to brands Remotly cannot reach directly. Connecting the server brings those devices into the same list as your TV and your local devices.

1. In Home Assistant, open your profile page and create a long-lived access token. Copy it.
2. In Remotly, choose Home Assistant and enter your server address, for example http://homeassistant.local:8123 or your HTTPS address, plus the token. Remotly validates the pair before saving anything.
3. Supported entities appear under their categories when you add a device: lights, switches, climate, curtains, vacuums, fans, locks and TV media players. If something is missing, tap Refresh devices and check that the entity is enabled in Home Assistant.

The token is stored in the iOS Keychain and sent only to that server; Forget Home Assistant removes it. State stays live through the server's own event stream. Because the server is reached at whatever address you enter, this is also the only route that can work away from home, provided your server is reachable from outside. Garage doors, gates and door openers are deliberately not imported.

Which route should you pick?

• You own Hue and nothing else: use the bridge directly. There is no server to run.
• A few Shelly relays and no server: connect them directly; each channel becomes its own device.
• Many brands, or devices Remotly cannot reach directly: let Home Assistant do the integration work and use Remotly as the front end.
• A mix: all three can be used together. Everything lands in the same My devices list, and you can give each device a familiar name.
• Remotly shows only the controls a device reports, so a lamp without color never gets a color picker and an uncalibrated cover gets open and close buttons but no position slider. Nothing in the list pretends to work.

Finding and pairing devices is free, so you can connect everything and see what appears before deciding; the remote and device controls themselves require Remotly Pro, with prices shown in the app before purchase.