I Love This Quick and Dirty Light Automation Toggle for Apple Home

I adore Apple Home, but its lack of a dedicated light toggle really bugs me. So, I use a trick to get around this limitation. It’s quick, it’s easy, and all it takes is to create a simple shortcut.

Why Use a Toggle?

A toggle is necessary for folks who still rely on a physical switch to turn on the lights when they walk into a room. By using a toggle, you can have a dedicated switch for them without the hassle of giving up your other smart light features.

How the Toggle Works

To make our toggle, we’ll use Apple Home’s automations and built-in Shortcuts support. We’ve discussed some other awesome ways to use iOS Shortcuts in the past, but here it’s perfect.

When our automation activates, the shortcut uses a conditional statement to determine if a connected light is on or off. It then performs the opposite action. Conditional statements are like a railroad switch. Depending on the position of the switch (the condition), something is routed in one or more directions (the actions).

If that sounds complicated, don’t worry — I’m going to walk you through it.

Configuring Apple Home and the Shortcut

First, open Apple Home. Find the button or switch you’d like to use as the toggle. Tap it and open its settings using the gear icon in the lower right corner of the screen. My switch is called Wall Hue. Yours will probably be labeled differently.

Creating the New Shortcut

On this switch, I have four physical buttons, and each button supports multiple presses. I will be using the button labeled Button 3 with a Single Press. So, I’ll tap the yellow Add text listed next to Single Press. Again, your button may be labeled differently, but the process is the same.

This will bring up a list of all your smart home devices, but don’t select anything just yet. Instead, scroll to the bottom of the page until you see Convert to Shortcut. Tap it.

We’ve now created a new shortcut that executes whenever we activate our smart button or switch. If done correctly, you should see one entry that says Set Scenes and Accessories.

Selecting your smart light at this point would turn your smart light either on or off. But it would only work one way. We need to make it so that the shortcut can do both. For that, we’ll call the “If” function.

Creating the Conditional Statement

At the bottom of the screen, in the bar labeled Search Actions type “If”. This should bring up the “If” function. Its icon looks like a fork in the road. Select it.

The “If” function is how we tell Shortcuts to use one of those conditional statements we discussed earlier. Now, you should see three new entries in the shortcut: If Condition, Otherwise and End If. These entries are our railroad switch.

Adding the Actions

We still need to add one action to the one we have and configure both. In the Search Actions bar, type “control” and select Control Home. When you do, you’ll notice that another entry labeled Set Scenes and Accessories has appeared below End If.

From here, all we need to do is fill in the Scenes and Accessories and Condition fields, then organize everything so it operates in the correct order.

Tap the first Scenes and Accessories field at the top of the screen and select the smart light you’d like to control. Mine is called LED Overhead. Now, tap Next.

We’ll also need to ensure the light will turn on. To do this, on the next screen you’ll see a white and yellow rectangular icon labeled with the name of your smart light. Make sure the text at the bottom of that icon says Turn On. Then tap Done.

You’ll follow the same procedure for the bottom Scenes and Accessories field, only this time, you’ll need to ensure the rectangular icon on the second screen is set to Turn Off.

Setting the Condition

Lastly, we’ll provide the condition that dictates which of these actions will occur. Tap the Condition field next to If on the main shortcut screen and select your smart light. Mine is called LED Overhead. Then tap Done.

This should populate the Condition field with the name of your light. Next to it, you’ll see a new field labeled “Is On” has appeared.

Organizing and Testing

Finally, we’ll put everything in the proper order. We’ll do this by dragging the bottom Set entry, which turns our light off, until it is between If and Otherwise. Then, drag our top Set entry, which turns our light on, until it is in the space between Otherwise and End If. Once complete, tap Next and test the action.

When you press the button, the shortcut should check to see if the light we are controlling is on. If so, the shortcut should turn the light off. Otherwise, it should turn the light on. If you are satisfied with how it works after testing, tap Done.

Following this procedure, you should be able to create a toggle for any light in just a couple of minutes. You can also use this format to control other devices, such as smart plugs. I’ve even set up a toggle for the sound machine in my bedroom and the air purifier in my living room. While it’s not the only way to create a toggle with Apple Home, it works for me. Hopefully, it’ll work for you as well.