‘Follow the Sun’ is a new Mac app to automate brightness and color temperature of HomeKit lights

With iOS 14 last year, Apple added a new Adaptive Lighting feature to HomeKit. This feature allows lighting that can change to be automatically adjusted throughout the day. A new third-party HomeKit app has now hit the Mac App Store, giving you new ways to automate your lights.

“Follow the Sun for HomeKit’ is a new app for the Mac that offers a variety of new ways to automate the process of adjusting your HomeKit lights. First off, “Follow the Sun” allows you HomeKit bulbs that support color temperature to automatically adjust color temperature in line with brightness. Here’s what that means:

With a single setting, you can sync Color Temperature with brightness. Increasing the brightness will give you a cool white light, while bringing the brightness down will give a warm glow.

You can also schedule your lights with “Follow the Sun,” allowing you to transition through different lighting settings over set periods:

Schedule your lights in a brand new way – imagine transitioning your office lights from a bright working light to a warm, relaxing glow over a period of an hour or more. Transitions so subtle, you don’t even notice them!

Whereas HomeKit’s native Adaptive Lighting feature is limited to select products, such as certain Philips Hue bulbs and the Eve light strip, “Follow the Sun” works with any HomeKit bulbs or wall dimmers that support brightness adjustments. Color temperature features require bulbs that natively support color temperature control.

The biggest limitation here is that the app “is most effective on a Mac that remains on all the time.” This is because the app runs in the background to automate your HomeKit lighting. If the Mac is powered off, it can’t control your HomeKit accessories.

“Follow the Sun for HomeKit” is available on the Mac App Store as a free download with a monthly in-app subscription of $0.99, yearly for $8.49, or lifetime for $17.99.