Philips Hue has announced that its smart light bulbs — both new and existing models — are being upgraded to feature built-in motion sensing. The new feature, called Hue MotionAware, uses radio-frequency (RF) sensing to detect changes in the Zigbee signal between bulbs, allowing them to respond to movement without the need for separate motion sensors.
It’s a major upgrade for Hue users, introducing a powerful new capability to existing hardware at no extra cost — though to activate the feature, you will need Hue’s new Bridge Pro ($99), which also launched this week at the IFA 2025 tech show. According to Signify, Hue’s parent company, MotionAware will work with all its mains-powered bulbs and fixtures manufactured after 2014, covering 95 percent of its install base.
How Hue MotionAware works
To create a MotionAware motion-sensing zone, you need Hue’s new Bridge Pro and at least three Hue devices in a room. It works with all new and most existing mains-powered Hue products via a firmware update. That includes smart bulbs, light strips, and fixtures. Portable devices, such as the Hue Go or Table Lamp, and battery-powered accessories, such as Hue switches, aren’t compatible. Neither is Hue’s current smart plug.
To set it up, select a room in the Hue app, choose the participating lights, and then motion can be detected in and around the area between those lights. The lights should ideally form a large zone, so three track lights in a row wouldn’t be optimal. You can only set up four MotionAware zones per bridge. These zones then become motion sensors in the app — and can trigger automations for any Hue lights or accessories (not just those in the Zone).
“All of the functionality you get with our physical motion sensors — including turning on when motion is detected or off when there’s been no movement for a certain amount of time — can be configured on motion-aware motion events,” says George Yianni, Hue CTO and founder, in an interview with The Verge.
“We’ve done something that’s quite a lot better than what else is out there.”
MotionAware is occupancy sensing, not presence sensing; it requires movement. Yianni says it’s comparable to the passive infrared sensing (PIR) Hue’s physical sensors use. This means it can be triggered by pets or other motion. A sensitivity slider in the app helps fine-tune detection. According to Yianni, a key benefit over PIR is that a MotionAware zone can cover a larger area than a single PIR sensor, and it’s also not limited to line of sight. MotionAware can’t sense light levels, which Hue Motion Sensors can, but you can pair a light sensor to a motion zone to feed it that data.
The positioning of the lights will also play a role in determining the effectiveness of the motion sensing. “We recommend that the lights surround an area which will roughly define the detection area in which motion will be detected,” says Yianni. “It will sense around the lights and in the broader room thanks to reflections, but detection reliability will depend on lots of factors.”
Beyond lighting automation, MotionAware can also integrate with Hue Secure, Hue’s DIY security platform that includes cameras, contact sensors, and a new video doorbell. Motion detection can trigger lights to flash red, activate Hue’s new plug-in chime/siren, and send an alert to your phone with a button to call emergency services.
The lighting automation is free, but security notifications require a Hue Secure subscription (starting at $40 a year and including video storage). If you don’t have cameras, you can enable just MotionAware security alerts for $1 a month. The fee is due to the requirement for cloud connectivity to send alerts, says Yianni, but all motion detection runs locally on the bridge.
MotionAware is entirely opt-in; it has to be manually enabled by the user in the Hue app, and motion data stays local unless used for security. Hue has also dropped its previous plans to require a Hue account, says Yianni, and follows strict privacy standards, including GDPR compliance. “We don’t have ulterior motives for selling stuff, helping search results, that other companies maybe do,” he says. “We will never activate this feature unless a user specifically configures it.”
MotionAware is built on RF sensing — a technology that uses wireless signals to “see” a space and detect disruptions within it. The data is then sent to the Bridge Pro, where AI algorithms are applied to figure out what is causing those disruptions, so the system can act accordingly. This is why it’s limited to the Bridge Pro, the V2 bridge isn’t powerful enough to run those algorithms, says Yianni.
Wi-Fi RF sensing has been around for a while. Hue’s sister company, Wiz, launched a Wi-Fi version of MotionAware called SpaceSense in 2023, and several Wi-Fi router companies use the tech, but it’s not known for its reliability. That may change thanks to a new IEEE 802.11bf standard for Wi-Fi sensing established earlier this year.
However, Hue is the first company to use Zigbee for RF sensing. The closed Zigbee mesh network allows for lower false detection rates compared to Wi-Fi, says Yianni. “We’ve done something that’s quite a lot better than what else is out there, including from ourselves on the Wi-Fi side,” referring to Wiz’s SpaceSense.
Yianni says MotionAware was developed using IP from Ivani, a US-based technology company that created Sensify — an RF-sensing firmware that can be layered onto the radio in any mains-powered device. Sensify supports multiple wireless protocols, including Zigbee, Wi-Fi, Thread, and BLE.
Yianni says it took several years to perfect MotionAware to ensure low latency and high reliability in every home. “We found that it’s quite easy to make an impressive demo, but it’s quite hard to make something that works reliably and fast enough for real use in the complicated mess of our homes.”
Philips Hue developed its own tech on top of Sensify and implemented strict design constraints to keep the system stable and limit false detections; that’s why there are only four sensing zones per bridge. “In time, we may be able to expand that,” he says. “But it creates a load on the network.”
Disappointingly, MotionAware sensing areas can’t be used as triggers for automations in third-party platforms like Apple Home or exposed to Matter. “It’s a new sensing modality, so we are exploring ways to make it more broadly available,” says Yianni. However, it is part of Hue’s public API.
A step toward the ambient smart home
The possibilities for RF sensing to bring the smart home closer to the dream of ambient control are very real. Ivani cofounder and CTO Matt Wootton told The Verge that it has the potential to be used beyond motion sensing for things like fall detection, sleep detection, and more. “It’s foundational tech to achieving an actually smart home,” he says.
“There is no industry that is better positioned to roll out unobtrusive, room-level, real-time presence sensing than lighting.”
Yianni has been working toward implementing Hue’s ambient sensing vision since he invented its first smart bulb in 2012. “There is no industry that is better positioned to roll out unobtrusive, room-level, real-time presence sensing than lighting,” he says. By turning existing smart lights into a motion-sensing network, MotionAware takes a big step toward a home that responds to you.
“Motion-activated lighting is wonderful,” he says. “Combine it with a smarter system that knows the time of the day, knows preferences, so that the light just does the right thing when you walk into a room, and I think you have the ultimate smart home experience.”
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