Hubspace

Review by eFreeware

If you have picked up a Hubspace light, fan or plug from Home Depot, this is the app that makes it work. Hubspace is free, carries no ads and asks nothing extra inside the app, and with more than a million installs and a 4.6 average across 57,212 ratings, it is clearly the default choice for people who own these devices. The pitch is simple: get your products connected and then run them from your phone, whether you are in the next room or away from the house.

What you get is a control layer for your connected home rather than a platform for every brand you might own. The developer describes setup as a matter of minutes, after which the app becomes the place you check lights, fans and anything else in the Hubspace line. That focus is the appeal: one app, one place for the hardware you have already bought.

I would expect this to suit households that have committed to the Hubspace range, or that plan to. It is not trying to be a universal hub for every smart device on the market, and it does not pretend to be. Read it as the companion app for a specific family of products and it makes a lot of sense.

Organizing a house room by room

The feature I would lean on most is the ability to sort products by room and by property. That sounds mundane, but it is the difference between a tidy list of named devices and a jumble of anonymous bulbs. If you have a rental, a second home or a garage that sits apart from the main building, keeping those devices in their own grouping stops them from cluttering the view of the rooms you use every day.

Grouping works alongside that. You can bundle products together so a single action covers several of them at once, which is the practical way to handle a bank of lights or a set of devices that always move together. Combined with the room structure, it means the app can be shaped around how your home is actually laid out rather than how the hardware was boxed.

For anyone running a house with more than a handful of connected products, this organization is what keeps the app usable over time. The value is not in any single clever feature but in the fact that everything stays findable.

Schedules, colors and fan speed

Day-to-day control covers the basics well. There are on and off controls for every product, and for lighting you can adjust both the color temperature and the color itself, so a room can go from bright working light in the morning to something warmer in the evening. Fans can have their speed changed from the app rather than a pull chain or a wall switch.

Schedules are the other piece worth thinking about. You can set products to run on a timetable, which is useful for lights that should come on before you get home or go off after you have gone to bed. It is the sort of automation that quietly removes small daily chores once it is configured.

The developer also lists integration with Google Assistant and Alexa, so voice control is part of the picture if you already have a speaker or display in the house. Between the app, schedules and voice, there are several ways to reach the same device, and which one you use will come down to habit.

Managing things while you are away

One of the more useful aspects here is that management and monitoring are not limited to your home network. The developer says you can keep an eye on your devices at home or while you are away, so the app works as something to check from a hotel room, an office or anywhere else you happen to be.

That remote angle is what makes the app more than a fancy remote control. Being able to confirm that a light is off or a fan is running while you are elsewhere is the kind of reassurance that people buy connected hardware for in the first place. It is also the reason the room and property organization matters more than it might first appear: the further you are from the devices, the more you rely on the app's structure to find the right one quickly.

I would treat this as the core of the app's everyday value. Setup happens once; checking in on your home happens whenever you are away from it.

Getting set up and where to get help

Setup is presented as a quick process: install the app, add your Hubspace products, and start managing them. Setup is described as taking minutes rather than an afternoon, which fits the idea that these are consumer devices bought off a store shelf rather than a professionally installed system.

If something does not go smoothly, support comes directly from Home Depot's Hubspace customer support team. The phone line, 1-877-592-5233, is staffed Monday through Friday from 8AM to 7PM EST and Saturday from 9AM to 6PM EST. That is a real phone number with published hours, though it does mean evenings and Sundays are not covered.

The app has been updated regularly since its December 2020 release. That is a maintenance note rather than a feature announcement.

Households already inside the Hubspace range

The clearest fit is a home that already owns Hubspace products, or one that is starting to accumulate them. If your lighting, fans and plugs come from that line, this app is the natural place to run them, and the free price with no ads and no in-app purchases removes the usual hesitation about trying it.

It also suits people who think in terms of rooms and properties rather than device lists. Anyone managing more than one location, or a house with a lot of connected fixtures, will get more out of the grouping and organization than someone with a single smart bulb.

What it is built for is the Hubspace ecosystem specifically. That is a narrow remit, and it is worth being clear-eyed about it: the app's strengths are all tied to that hardware, and its reach extends only as far as the products it supports. If your smart home is built around Hubspace gear, this is the app you want. If it is not, the app has little to offer you.

A focused companion for Hubspace hardware

Hubspace does one job and does it without charging for the privilege. It sets up your Hubspace products, organizes them by room and property, gives you on and off controls, color and color temperature adjustment for lights, fan speed, grouping, schedules, and remote access, with Google Assistant and Alexa integration on top. The 4.6 rating from tens of thousands of users suggests that combination lands well with the people who own the hardware.

The trade-offs are the ones you would expect from a manufacturer's app. It is tied to one brand's products, and support runs on limited weekday and Saturday hours. None of that is a flaw in what the app sets out to do; it is simply the shape of it.

If you own Hubspace devices, install it and set up your rooms properly from the start, because the organization is what makes the rest pleasant to use. If you are shopping for a way to control a mixed collection of smart home gear from several brands, this app is not built for that, and you should judge it on the narrower job it actually performs.

What's new in version 2.5.1

Bug fixes and Improvements