Seasons

An unofficial cross-platform Tauri app for controlling Philips Hue lights, devices, scenes, automations, and Entertainment audio sync.

The project is primarily aimed at Linux, especially for features that are usually better covered by the macOS Hue desktop app.

Features

• Room-first Hue control UI
• Scene browsing, activation, creation, and deletion
• Device controls grouped by room or by type
• Hue automations with dedicated editing flows
• Entertainment audio sync over PipeWire on Linux

Overview

Seasons is built around five top-level pages:

• Rooms for the day-to-day room view and scene control
• Devices for all controllable hardware grouped by type
• Automations for Hue behavior instances and schedules
• Settings for bridge management and theme selection
• Audio sync as a collapsible control surface on the main page

Walkthrough

Rooms

The main page is room-first. Each room stays compact until you open it, then shows:

• current on/off state
• room brightness
• scene chips with bridge-derived colors
• room lights and per-device controls

The room header is meant to be the fast control surface: you can toggle the room, set brightness, then open it only when you need scenes or individual devices.

Devices

The Devices page pulls everything into one place and groups it by function instead of room. That makes it easier to find hardware that does not belong to the normal room-light flow, such as plugs, switches, and sensors.

Current grouping is:

• Lights
• Plugs
• Switches
• Sensors

Automations

The Automations page lists bridge automations and lets you open them into a dedicated editor flow. From there you can inspect the bridge payload, edit supported configuration fields, and toggle the automation without leaving the app.

The app also surfaces the bridge-reported automation type, so the UI reflects what Hue actually exposes instead of inventing its own categories.

Audio sync

Audio sync uses Hue Entertainment, not the normal REST light path. The sync controls live on the main page so they are close to the rooms they affect.

To use it:

1. Create a Hue Entertainment area in the official Hue app.
2. Pick that entertainment area in Seasons.
3. Pick the PipeWire output to capture.
4. Choose sync speed and color palette.
5. Start sync.

Current room uses the active room palette as the sync color base. Other palettes are available when you want a fixed sync look instead.

Settings

Settings is kept narrow on purpose. It covers:

• theme family and light/dark/system mode
• saved bridge management
• reconnecting with an existing username
• pairing a new local bridge app user

The app persists its state in platform-appropriate config/data locations instead of browser local storage.

Connect to a Hue bridge

For a first-time setup, the normal flow is:

1. Open Settings.
2. Press Discover bridges.
3. Select the bridge you want to use.
4. Press the physical button on the Hue bridge.
5. In Seasons, press Pair new app.

Seasons creates a local bridge user, fills in the generated username automatically, and stores the bridge session for later reconnects.

Reconnect with an existing username

If you already have a username for this bridge and want to connect manually:

1. Open Settings.
2. Enter the bridge IP.
3. Paste the existing username into the username field.
4. Press Connect bridge.

Notes

• Entertainment audio sync needs a pairing flow that generated a clientkey, so older saved connections may need to be paired once again.
• The saved bridge session is persisted locally, so you should not need to reconnect every time unless you explicitly forget the bridge.

Linux dependencies

You need both the normal Tauri/WebKitGTK build stack and the PipeWire development package for audio sync.

Debian / Ubuntu

sudo apt update
sudo apt install \
  build-essential \
  curl \
  file \
  libayatana-appindicator3-dev \
  librsvg2-dev \
  libssl-dev \
  libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev \
  libxdo-dev \
  libpipewire-0.3-dev

Fedora

sudo dnf install \
  cairo-gobject-devel \
  gcc-c++ \
  glib2-devel \
  gtk3-devel \
  libappindicator-gtk3-devel \
  libxdo-devel \
  openssl-devel \
  pipewire-devel \
  pkgconf-pkg-config \
  webkit2gtk4.1-devel

Arch Linux

sudo pacman -S --needed \
  base-devel \
  libappindicator-gtk3 \
  libpipewire \
  openssl \
  webkit2gtk-4.1 \
  xdotool

macOS dependencies

For macOS desktop development, install the Xcode Command Line Tools:

xcode-select --install

Audio sync on macOS uses ScreenCaptureKit and links against the system Swift runtime. In practice, that means:

• install Xcode Command Line Tools at minimum
• if you use a full Xcode install, launch it once so setup completes
• if you have multiple Xcode installs, make sure xcode-select -p points at a valid Xcode or Command Line Tools directory

macOS audio sync also requires Screen Recording permission at runtime.

Rust / frontend tools

rustup target add wasm32-unknown-unknown
cargo install tauri-cli --version "^2.0.0" --locked
cargo install trunk
cargo install wasm-bindgen-cli --version 0.2.117

Development

Run the app with:

cargo tauri dev

On some Linux graphics stacks, WebKitGTK needs the DMA-BUF renderer disabled:

WEBKIT_DISABLE_DMABUF_RENDERER=1 cargo tauri dev

Build

cargo tauri build

Install from a release

Linux releases are published as:

• seasons_0.1.0-rc1_amd64.deb
• seasons-0.1.0-rc1-1.x86_64.rpm

Debian / Ubuntu

Download the .deb, then install it with:

sudo apt install ./seasons_0.1.0-rc1_amd64.deb

Fedora / RHEL / other RPM-based systems

Download the .rpm, then install it with:

sudo dnf install ./seasons-0.1.0-rc1-1.x86_64.rpm

If your distro uses another RPM frontend, the equivalent local-install command works too.

Notes

• Entertainment audio sync requires a Hue Entertainment area created in the official Hue app.
• Entertainment audio sync on Linux currently uses PipeWire output capture.
• Entertainment audio sync on macOS uses ScreenCaptureKit system audio capture and requires Screen Recording permission.
• The macOS binary now points @rpath at /usr/lib/swift to avoid loading duplicate Swift runtimes from Xcode toolchains.
• The saved bridge session and app state are stored in XDG config/data locations, not in browser local storage.