**UPDATE 2/7/16: Amazon has added native LIFX support, meaning that you can now connect your LIFX bulbs via the Alexa app under Settings > Connected Home > LIFX and after doing so, can use Alexa voice commands to turn your LIFX lights off or on. However, you must still set your bulbs up and register them with LIFX first, via the free LIFX mobile app or LIFX website; this change only means it’s no longer necessary to enable the LIFX skill and link Alexa to your LIFX account via that skill. It’s also important to know that as of this writing the only native LIFX commands supported are for turning LIFX lights off and on, dimming and color changes must still be controlled via the LIFX skill or mobile app.

Okay gang: I know Mondays are usually reserved for Stupid Alexa Tricks (and I’ll run that post on Wednesday this week), but since I also know lots of you are buying, or considering, LIFX smart bulbs and I’ve learned first hand what a pain setup can be if you don’t know about all the hidden gotchas, I figured a how-to for LIFX bulbs was more urgently needed.

What Can LIFX Bulbs Do?

I’m giving you this information first, because now that I have two of these in my own home I can tell you the setup hassle was totally worth it. And remember, since I’m going to lay out the step-by-step I wish had been available when I set up my bulbs, it won’t be as big a hassle for you.

I can ask Alexa to turn my LIFX bulbs/groups of bulbs on or off, change their colors or change their brightness level between 1-100% (dimming).

In the LIFX mobile app I can group them and create “themes” (like the “scenes” function of the more expensive Philips HUE bulbs and hub) change the settings to mimic candlelight, to cycle through all colors, to make the bulbs respond to music or other sounds in the room, to gradually dim and turn off with a sleep timer function, and more.

In other words, these things are incredibly fun, cool and functional. And since LIFX bulbs don’t require a hub it’s much less expensive and easier to gradually add them to your home.

Setup Hassle: My Pain Is Your Gain

I spent over an hour trying to get my bulbs set up and connected to my Echo before throwing in the towel and calling Amazon Echo support. That call lasted over 40 minutes, mostly because setting up these bulbs and connecting them to Echo is not at all intuitive, Help pages on the LIFX site are incomplete and in some cases omit pretty crucial information, and information provided in the detail page of the LIFX Alexa skill isn’t quite accurate either.

But now that I’ve got it working, I can condense everything I learned down into a pretty simple how-to that tells you where the gotchas are and how to avoid them. The Setup How-To below looks long, but that’s mostly because of all the screenshots and my erring on the side of over-explaining, in case anyone who’s reading needs the extra info.

The Setup How-To

Please read through these steps in full before you start setting up your LIFX bulbs, because in some cases the order of the steps must be followed exactly to avoid problems, and working with both the Alexa and LIFX apps (in a specific order) is necessary.

The short version is that you’ll download and install the LIFX app, add your bulbs in the app so you can update their firmware, add them to your network and add them to a (free) LIFX Cloud account—this part is necessary for Echo connectivity—, rename and group your bulbs as desired to make them easier for Alexa to find, enable the LIFX skill in the Alexa app to connect your LIFX Cloud account to your Echo, and then start playing with your bulbs!

1. Open your bulbs, screw them into your fixtures and turn the fixtures on.

I’m using the first-gen, 120V bulbs in standard lamp fixtures. You may choose to get the newer, 1000 series bulbs, which currently retail at $59.99 each. Just be sure to read product details to ensure you’re getting the correct bulb for your fixture(s) — all U.S.-sold light fixtures should have an informational label affixed to the socket detailing the correct wattage and voltage to use.

2. Download the MOST RECENT VERSION of the LIFX app to your mobile device and install it.

Note that the most recent version is only currently (as of 12/7/15) available in the iOS store and Google Play, the version that was most recently available on Amazon* is out of date by two years and does not include the functions to let you complete the process of connecting to your Echo.

*UPDATE 12/7/15 – the old version of the app is no longer available in the Amazon App Store, but hopefully that’s a sign that the new version is on its way.

*UPDATE 1/11/16 – The newer version of the LIFX app is now available in the Amazon App Store.

This was the single biggest fail in my attempts to get my bulbs set up: LIFX doesn’t acknowledge the existence of a prior-version app in their Help pages, and their Help pages only provide information applicable to the newer version of the app. I downloaded the app from Amazon, and spent a lot of time being confused and pulling my hair out. Echo tech support is now aware of this problem and working with their LIFX liaison to get the new version added to the Amazon App Store.

Until then, since the only way to get Google Play apps onto a Fire device is via sideloading or granting special permissions—neither of which is recommended by Amazon—you’re going to need an Android or iOS phone/tablet for this. Once you’ve completed setup and Alexa’s controlling your bulbs you don’t have to ever use the app again, so if you don’t have an Android or iOS phone/tablet of your own you can borrow one from a friend for this part and your friend can delete the app when you give their device back.

3. Start the app and enter your email address on the startup screen.

Enter your email address in the top box, then tap the GET STARTED button. This is what that screen looks like:

4. Add your bulb(s) in the app.

The screenshots shown here are from an iOS device, but they’re very similar in the Android app. The screen below is for adding bulbs, just tap the plus sign.

A ‘discovery’ screen will come up, listing all LIFX bulbs detected in the vicinity. On the LIFX Help pages it says setup will involve disconnecting from your own network and connecting to the LIFX network. This was not my experience, my bulbs were detected immediately without needing to do that. But if the bulb list won’t populate for you, here’s the how-to from the LIFX site:

a) Leave the app and go to Settings ->Wi-Fi and choose the LIFX Bulb network.

b) If LIFX network is simply called LIFX Bulb, then enter lifx1234 to connect when prompted for password. Bulbs with newer firmware will not require a password to connect to the bulb.

c) LIFX app should bring a dropdown to take you back to the app. You can also just switch back to the LIFX app.

Wait a few seconds, and the app will list the networks the bulb sees.

5. Choose your network and tap Connect Bulb.

Unfortunately, each bulb must be added to your network individually through this step. Find your desired network and tap to select it, tap Connect Bulb, then enter your WiFi password when prompted in the app.

6. Repeat steps 4-5 for all your bulbs.

All the bulbs you’ve added will then be added to the List screen. There’s also a default group of “All Lights” available in the list screen.

The colored circle shown around each bulb will indicate its current color and brightness level, if the bulb is currently turned on. If it’s off, the name will still be there but the bulb icon and ring will be grayed out.

Tap the name of any bulb (or the arrow to the right of its name) to view its detail screen:

Note that on this screen you can drag the color circle back or forward to adjust color (current selection is indicated by the down-pointing triangle at top), and you can drag up and down in the center of the circle to adjust brightness. Tap the Colors or Whites icons at the bottom to toggle between color and white options. The Effects icon takes you to a screen where you set special effects for the bulb, like simulated candlelight, color cycling and more. The Themes icon is to access Themes, after/if you’ve set them up.

7. Update Each Bulb

Tap a bulb name from the List screen to load its detail screen. As shown in the screenshot above, when a new bulb is added, at the upper right of its detail screen there will be an “update” link. Tap it to update the bulb’s firmware.

The big gotcha here is that, in the Android version of the app at least, there was no progress bar or confirmation message of any kind to show the update was happening. I checked the LIFX website for more information, to see if maybe I was doing something wrong, but all I learned there was that it can take up to 30 minutes for the update to complete.

After tapping the Update link for my first bulb I went back to the List screen, selected my second bulb, and tapped the Update link for it, too. Then I waited. It took around ten minutes for my two bulbs to update, and the only way I could tell the update was complete is that each bulb’s icon and ring became grayed out on the List screen. Tap each one’s bulb icon to turn them all back on.

8. “Claim” Your Bulbs In The LIFX Cloud

This step is required for Echo connectivity, because the Alexa software must connect to LIFX’s cloud to identify and control your specific bulbs.

After updating your bulbs, the Update link on each bulb’s detail page will change to a Claim link (shown in screenshot below). Tap that link to claim your bulbs. For the first one, you will be prompted to create a password for your LIFX Cloud account. This login is not the same as that for any LIFX.com account you may have previously set up for shopping on the LIFX site, so if you’ve never set up an LIFX Cloud account you will need to create a new login password for it here, and make a note of that password for future reference.

Another gotcha: the login screen doesn’t include a link for “register” or “new account”, and the LIFX Help pages say to use the ‘forgot password’ link on the login screen to create a new account.

Repeat this step for each bulb.

9. Rename each bulb and group them as desired.

By default, the bulbs were added to your network with names consisting of letters and numbers that are more like part numbers. You can rename the individual bulbs to make them easier to tell apart, then group bulbs as desired in groups you can name yourself (e.g., Kitchen, Living Room, Office, etc.).

To rename a bulb, in its detail screen, tap the pencil icon at the upper right (this should appear where the Claim link was after you finished that step) to open an Edit screen for the bulb. Again, the Android version may differ from the iOS version. If you don’t see a pencil icon, tap and hold on the bulb name to make it editable and bring up a keyboard for editing.

You may have to experiment a little, changing colors for individual bulbs before re-naming them in order to tell them apart during this step, because the default names are very similar and won’t clue you in to which bulb is installed in which fixture.

When you’ve got the names how you want them, you can add individual bulbs to Groups if you like. If you do this, you will be able to control sets of bulbs by Group name via your Echo when setup is complete.

Click here to view LIFX’s Help page on adding and removing bulbs from Groups.

10. Enable the LIFX Skill in the Alexa app.

Notice that you’re doing this last. As soon as you enable the LIFX skill you’ll be prompted to login to your LIFX Cloud account. When you do, you’ll be taken to a page where you need to click/tap a button to confirm you want to connect your LIFX Cloud account to your Echo. Tap or click it.

Back in the Alexa app, tap the LIFX skill’s name to view its detail page. Try out the sample interaction phrases there, substituting your own bulb or group names.

After You’re Done…

From here on out you won’t use switches to turn your LIFX bulbs off and on. Leave the fixtures powered on at all times to enable control via Echo or the LIFX app. You may still want to turn the fixtures off or unplug them under certain circumstances, such as when you’re going to be away longer than usual, but when the fixtures are off or unplugged you won’t be able to control the bulbs via Alexa or the LIFX app. Also remember that you can pre-program your LIFX bulbs to turn on and off at certain times via the LIFX app or set Vacation mode in the app to have your bulbs turn on and off at random times, and either of those options may be preferable to powering down the fixtures entirely when you’re traveling.

When issuing commands via Alexa, “LIFX” is pronounced “Life Ex”. And if she’s having trouble carrying out your commands, include the word “my” or “the” in front of group names (e.g., with a group called “Living Room”: “Alexa, tell Life Ex to change my Living Room lights to blue.”).

If you’ve borrowed someone’s device for setup but still want to use the features of the app to control your bulbs in ways Alexa can’t (e.g., using the color wheel to make more specific color choices, using special effects, etc.), you can download and install the old version of the app from Amazon. 12/7/15 UPDATE – The old version of the app is no longer available on Amazon at all as of this writing; hopefully the newer version will be listed there soon.

Okay, so maybe that wasn’t super-fast or super-simple. But I’m pretty confident it took less time and frustration for you than it did for me. And once these bulbs are set up, they’re a blast!

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**UPDATE 12/7/15** – The original, color A19 LIFX bulb is no longer on sale at a discount, so the best-priced LIFX option is now the LIFX Color 1000, pictured below & currently priced at $59.99.

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