You bought a new Hue Bridge, either because your old one died, or because you finally hit the device limit on the first-gen unit and need the headroom. Philips has a migration tool inside the Hue app that handles the basics. What it does not always handle is the long tail: scene order, room configuration, scheduled routines, third-party voice integrations, and HomeKit pairings. This guide is the complete playbook so nothing surprises you.
What the migration tool actually does
The official migration tool moves three things automatically: the list of lights, the rooms and zones, and the room or zone color settings. It does not move scenes (it migrates only their names and rebuilds them), scheduled routines (it migrates them but they often need re-binding to the new bridge’s accessories), HomeKit code (you have to re-add the bridge to HomeKit, which means re-pairing every HomeKit accessory tied to the bridge), or Alexa and Google Home integration (you need to unlink the old bridge and link the new one).
So the migration is more like sixty percent automatic and forty percent manual. Plan for an evening, not an hour.
Before you start
Document the state of your current setup. The Hue app does not have a clean export, so you will be screenshotting and writing things down.
- Screenshot every room’s light list
- Screenshot every scene per room (you need both the name and the actual light brightness or color, because the migration sometimes resets colors to defaults)
- Screenshot every formula or routine, including its trigger time and which lights it affects
- Write down which voice assistants are linked to the bridge
- If you use HomeKit, screenshot every automation that references a Hue accessory
This is tedious. Do not skip it. The number of users who lose careful color tuning in the migration and cannot rebuild it from memory is significant.
The migration sequence
Have both bridges powered on, both connected to the same network, and your phone on the same network. The new bridge should be a fresh install with no lights paired. Then:
- Open the Hue app. Tap Settings, then Hue Bridges.
- Tap your old bridge. Scroll to “Migrate Hue Bridge”.
- Follow the prompts. The app will guide you through pressing the round button on the new bridge.
- The migration takes about ten minutes. Do not unplug either bridge.
- At the end, the app prompts you to retire the old bridge. You can keep it running for a few days as a fallback if you want, but do not pair new lights to it after the migration.
After the migration completes, your lights, rooms, and zones will be on the new bridge. Open each room and verify the lights are present and respond. If any are missing, see the troubleshooting section below.
Rebuilding scenes
The migration preserves scene names but often resets the actual color values to defaults. Open each room, tap the scene, and verify it looks like it should. If it does not, the fastest rebuild is to take the screenshot you saved earlier, tap the scene’s edit button, and either dial in the color manually or pick the color from a photo of the original scene appearance.
If you have a lot of scenes (more than thirty across your home), the rebuild can take an hour. Be patient. There is no shortcut.
Re-linking voice assistants
Alexa, Google Assistant, and HomeKit all see the new bridge as a different device because its serial number and HAP credentials differ from the old one. You need to unlink the old and link the new.
For Alexa: disable the Hue skill in the Alexa app, then re-enable it and complete the link flow with the new bridge. Devices will rediscover and inherit their previous group assignments by name. Routines that referenced specific devices by ID will be broken and need to be edited to point to the new device entries.
For Google Home: same pattern. Unlink Philips Hue in the Google Home app, then re-link. Existing routines that reference Hue devices may continue working if the device names match exactly, but rebooting your Google speakers after the relink is recommended.
For HomeKit: remove the bridge from the Home app (Home Settings, Hubs & Bridges, tap the bridge, Remove). Then add the new bridge using the HomeKit code on its underside. Every HomeKit-exposed accessory needs to be re-added to rooms and any HomeKit automations referencing them will need to be rebuilt.
What if a light did not migrate?
Occasionally a light fails to migrate, usually because it was unreachable at the moment the migration ran. Power-cycle the light by switching its wall switch off and on. Wait two minutes. Open the Hue app and check if it appeared in the new bridge’s light list. If not, manually add it as a new light through the standard add light flow. You will need to do this for each missing light.
If many lights failed to migrate, the new bridge may not have had a strong enough Zigbee signal during migration. Move the new bridge closer to the center of your home and re-run the migration tool.
What about third-party tools?
If you use tools like Hue Sync, Home Assistant’s Hue integration, or any Maker API style tool that talks to the bridge directly, every one of those needs to be reconfigured to point to the new bridge’s IP and API key. The old API key is dead on the new bridge.
The 24-hour window after migration
The day after a Hue migration is when you discover what did not actually transfer. Run through your usual evening routine deliberately. Try every scene in every room. Trigger any motion sensor automation you have. Make a list of anything that does not behave correctly, even if it is small.
Fix the list in one batch the following day rather than chasing each issue individually as you spot them. This catches the things that look intact in the app but actually broke at the bridge-to-cloud token level, especially around HomeKit code pairings. If you find an accessory that refuses to behave even after re-pairing, our HomeKit bridge drop guide covers the deeper recovery paths.
