How to Find Hue Bridge IP Address? Quick & Easy

Last Updated: April 5, 2023 / By

There is no surprise that Hue lights are some of the most sought-after additions to smart homes nowadays, as they make it both highly comfortable and enjoyable to set up lighting while improving the ambiance of a home.

That being said, as the Hue lighting system is made up of smart devices, unlike regular lights with no such qualities, it naturally requires an initial setup process to get things operational and accessible within the home network, which can be a challenge at times.

In this article, our topic will be the process of finding the IP address of a Hue bridge, in particular, which is a piece of information that can become necessary in various scenarios, whether it’s setting your Hue bridge up in your home network for the first time or developing a Hue app by using the Hue API.

So, how can you find the IP address of your Hue bridge?

Here are the methods you can utilize to find your Hue bridge’s IP address quickly and easily:

  • Use the Hue bridge information section in the Hue smartphone application.
  • Navigate to the MeetHue Discovery website on a device on the same network as your Hue bridge.
  • Note the MAC address of your Hue bridge and find the IP address through your router’s interface.

In the following sections, we will take a more detailed look at all the methods we have outlined above for finding the IP address of a Hue bridge, go through the process of changing a Hue bridge IP address manually, and finally, find out what to do in a scenario where the Hue bridge fails to get an IP address automatically.

How to Find Hue Bridge IP Address?

Finding the IP address of a Hue Bridge is a fairly simple task that doesn’t require any technical expertise, as Philips has created a couple of different techniques to make this as convenient as possible for the user.

Below, you can find sub-sections for each of the techniques you can use to find the IP address of your Hue bridge, ordered by ease of use, in which you will find step-by-step guides to conduct the process as quickly and comfortably as possible.

Find Hue Bridge IP Address from the Hue App

Using the Hue application on your smartphone offers the most straightforward technique to find the IP address of your Hue bridge, as it only takes a few taps on the screen to access the information you need.

Below, you can find a quick step-by-step guide that will take you through the process of finding your Hue bridge IP address with the Hue app:

  1. Open the Hue application on your smartphone.
  2. Press the Settings button on the bottom menu bar.
  3. Navigate to the My Hue System section in Settings.
  4. Press the information (“i” icon) button next to the Hue bridge you would like to get the IP address of.
  5. Find the IP address of your Hue bridge written under the “IP address” label.
hue bridge ip address from hue app

Please ensure that your smartphone is connected to the same network as your Hue bridge to be able to retrieve the IP address with this method successfully.

Find Hue Bridge IP Address from MeetHue Discovery

Another pretty straightforward way to find the IP address of your Hue bridge is to use the MeetHue Discovery website, which is great for fulfilling the task on devices where you don’t have the Hue app, such as your computer.

Here is a step-by-step guide that will take you through the process of finding your Hue bridge’s IP address by using MeetHue Discovery:

  1. Navigate to the MeetHue Discovery website on a device that’s in the same network as your Hue bridge.
  2. Locate the “internalipaddress” label in the text that shows up on the screen.
  3. Note down the IP address value which comes after the “internalipaddress” label.
hue bridge ip address from discovery meethue

If the MeetHue Discovery website does not give you any information regarding your Hue bridge, it means that your device is not connected to the same network as the Hue bridge.

Find Hue Bridge IP Address from Router & MAC Address

Finally, the last technique you can utilize to find the IP address of your Hue bridge is to find the device through your router’s interface by its MAC address, which, while a more complicated process, will allow you to find the information without any external apps or websites.

To find your Hue bridge IP address from your router’s interface, you can follow the steps below:

  1. Look at the bottom of your Hue bridge to find a barcode that has exactly six characters written below it.
  2. Note these six characters, and place a colon after every two characters to form the second half of the MAC address. For instance, if the six characters under your Hue bridge is 0A32B7, the string would be 0A:32:B7.
  3. Log in to your router’s interface.
  4. Find the list of clients where the MAC address and IP address information for each of the connected devices reside.
  5. Compare the last six characters of the MAC addresses on the list to the string you have noted in step 2 to find the IP address of your Hue bridge.
hue bridge mac address

As the first six characters of a MAC address for a Hue bridge is the vendor ID, which can show differences based on factors such as your location, we omit the first half of the MAC address to make things simpler.

For instance, while US Hue bridge MAC addresses start with EC:B5:FA, the UK Hue bridge MAC addresses start with 00:17:88.

How to Change the IP Address of a Hue Bridge?

In some cases, it can become necessary to manually set the IP address that your Hue bridge would otherwise automatically receive from the router, which prevents it from changing as a result of modifications in the home network and ensures that the bridge always receives the same IP address, also known as a static IP.

Here are the steps we recommend following to change the IP address of your Hue bridge:

  1. Open the Hue app on your smartphone.
  2. Press the Settings button on the bottom menu bar.
  3. Navigate to the Hue Bridge settings menu under the Advanced section.
  4. Press the Network Settings button.
  5. Turn off the DHCP slider.
  6. Fill in the IP Address, Netmask, and Gateway fields accordingly to suit your home network.
hue bridge network settings

To ensure that you don’t give an IP address already in use to your Hue bridge (which would create an IP conflict), we highly recommend logging in to your router’s interface first and checking the IP addresses of the currently connected devices.

If you would like to go back to automatic IP assignment at any point, all you will need to do is to put the DHCP slider back on, which will cause the router to automatically assign an IP address to your Hue bridge the next time you restart it.

Hue Bridge Not Getting IP Address – What to Do?

While not too common, issues related to the DHCP server can sometimes prevent your Hue bridge from obtaining an IP address automatically from the router, leaving it in a state where it has no IP address and hence, unable to be accessed.

Our primary recommendation to resolve the issue of your Hue bridge not getting an IP address is to set the IP address manually by using the Network Settings section in the Hue application (Settings -> Hue Bridge settings -> Network Settings), which will ensure that the device always has a valid IP.

You can refer to the previous section for a detailed step-by-step guide on the process of manually setting the IP address of a Hue bridge.

While this is more of a workaround than a direct solution to the problem (unless you actually require your Hue bridge to have a static IP), whether your Hue bridge’s IP address is automatically or manually assigned won’t make a change in how it operates and how you use it, meaning that it’s not strictly necessary to find the root of the problem in this case.

Conclusion

While it may not seem like so at first, finding the IP address of your Hue bridge is not a daunting task at all, primarily thanks to Philips creating extremely user-friendly ways of obtaining this information.

Below, you can find a quick summary of the techniques we recommend utilizing to find the IP address of your Hue bridge:

  • Navigate to the Hue bridge information section (Settings -> My Hue System -> Info button) on the Hue app, which should already be installed on your smartphone for controlling the lights.
  • Go to the MeetHue Discovery website on any device on the same network as your Hue bridge, which is an ideal method to get the IP address on devices you don’t have the Hue app.
  • Find the MAC address of your Hue bridge (at the bottom) and use this information to find the IP address through the interface of your router.

Among all these options, using the Hue application is, without a doubt, our favorite one, as we have found this technique to be both the most user-friendly and also the quickest way of finding the IP address.