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I have various brands of RGB smart globes (or 'smart bulbs') and LED strips, each with their own Android apps. I'm pleased to say that, these days, Google Home can set the brightness and colour—at least to one of a limited set—for all of them. And now that it also lets users create multi-step 'routines', I can do nearly everything I want with my lights, with little hassle.

But the one thing that seems to be missing is the colour-cycling modes, where the lights slowly and continuously transition between colours—it's nice for parties, etc. Each of the apps offer 'scenes' with this feature, and they all have the same names: 'dazzle', 'gorgeous', etc. So even though the apps are styled differently, I suspect they're largely the same under the bonnet.

I've seen people claim on various websites that they've been able to set these modes from Google Home for their Philips Hue globes, but they haven't included details, so I haven't found out if the same steps work for these other brands.

Is there a way to do it, or is this just a Google Home feature we have to keep waiting for?

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Google Assistant Smart Home Actions has a Trait called lighteffects which can be used to supply what you need.

This is something the lightbulb supplier will need to implement as it's a property of the device that the service needs to report to Google when it asks for the capabilities.

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  • The fact that there's API for it is promising. I guess I'll just have to hope that the Google Home app will provide an interface for it, and that the suppliers will make software updates available for it at their end. It's unfortunate that suppliers don't really know the details about their products; just saying 'Google Home compatible' is all they need to say to convince most of their market. Dec 13, 2019 at 1:51

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