Comparison

OnSwitch for Philips Hue vs Exist

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

OnSwitch for Philips Hue

Enhance your smart lighting with dynamic scenes and effects. Create immersive experiences for holidays, parties, and relaxation with a user-friendly interface. Features include sunrise alarms, sunset timers, and creative color controls.

Highlights
  • Animated light scenes for holidays and parties
  • Live game-sync events for sports
  • Sunrise alarm and sunset sleep timer
  • Creative color control and discovery
  • Manage and control light groups
  • Hero lighting with cinematic flair
Features
Read full description

LIGHTS! COLORS! ACTION! OnSwitch is the #1 rated companion app for Philips Hue smart lighting systems. Downloaded over 2.5 million times! OnSwitch for Philips Hue has a beautiful, simple user interface but it's also powerful. Your Hue lights come alive with a single click! • Holidays • Party/Disco Lighting • Sports, Including LIVE game-sync events • Sunrise alarm and sunset sleep timer • Fun kids content • Accent Lighting • Color flows • Candle light • Nature Scenes • Lightning • Fireworks Our Hue app connects to your Philips Hue Bridge, creating immersive animated experiences with your Hue lights! Get the best Hue App, get OnSwitch! UNLOCK EVERYTHING With OnSwitch Premium subscription you can unlock our entire content library and more! • Unlock ALL albums (300+ animated light scenes) • Unlimited SIRI Shortcuts • Access exclusive LIVE events. • Amazing NEW scenes added regularly. HERO LIGHTING Our Hue light scenes have cinematic flair. Music sound tracks set the mood while our an animation engine delivers bursts of light and sound where anything can happen. Santa lands on your house! Zombies attack! You are in a spaceship battle! Other light scenes transport you to a Lush Forest, Venice or even Deep Space to chill out in the Orion Nebula listening to superb ambient electronic music. CREATIVE LIGHTING OnSwitch gives you smarter, clearer ways to control your smart lights. Instead of guessing what Hue's "Light Recipes" mean, our Everyday Lighting album presents gorgeous photos of antique and halogen bulbs or a skylight so it's clear what kind of light you are going to get. Our fluorescent tube even flickers on like the real thing! Want Color? Other apps make you drag a pin around a color wheel. OnSwitch makes it easy with curated Pastels and Accent colors. Warm and Cool color flows. And "Color Splat!" our exclusive color discovery feature that's always fun and a surprise. SUNRISE ALARM & SUNSET SLEEP TIMER Wake up with a beautiful sunrise and your favorite music! Go to sleep with a sunset, optimized for better sleep. LIGHT GROUPS Easily create and manage groups of bulbs. Control each group independently. OnSwitch manages groups on your Philips Hue Bridge so it will play nicely with your other apps! IMPORTANT! • You will need LIFX smart bulbs or a Philips Hue bridge and light bulbs to use this app. • OnSwitch requires iOS10 or later to run. SUBSCRIPTION TERMS OnSwitch Premium subscription unlocks all of the app's lighting content. You can preview all of the content for 3 days FREE before your subscription starts. If you choose to subscribe, you will be charged a per month subscription fee according to your country. The subscription fee will be shown in the app before you complete the payment. Your subscription will automatically renew at the end of each subscription term, unless auto-renewal is turned off at least 24 hours before the end of the term. Subscription renewals cost the same as the original subscription, and your credit card will be charged through your iTunes account at confirmation of purchase. You may manage your subscription and turn off auto-renewal at any time after purchase by going to your iTunes Account Settings. Refunds will not be given for any unused portion of the term. For additional information, please read: •Terms of Service (https://www.getonswitch.com/terms) • Privacy Policy (https://www.getonswitch.com/privacy)

About

Exist

This app helps you understand and optimize your behavior by combining manual tracking with automatic syncing from various services. Track health, productivity, and more, uncover relationships between habits, and run experiments on your behavior. Gain daily insights and weekly summaries to improve your life.

Highlights
  • Track any data point manually
  • Automatic syncing from health and productivity services
  • Daily insights and weekly summaries
  • Discover correlations between habits
  • Run behavioral experiments
  • Integrates with Apple Health and other services
Read full description

THIS APP REQUIRES A PAID ACCOUNT. Signing up for a new account will start a 30-day free trial. After your trial, you can choose to purchase a subscription using in-app purchase if you wish to continue using Exist. By combining manual tracking with automatic syncing from other services, we can help you understand and optimise your behaviour. Track whatever you like. Bring your activity from your phone or fitness tracker, add other services like your calendar for greater context on what you're up to, and manually enter anything else you care about. Track everything in one place See numbers about things like your health, activity, productivity, social media, and local weather all together. Data syncs automatically from connected services, so your step count and time asleep are right next to manual data points, like your energy level and how many coffees you drank. But it's not just about raw numbers. We deliver extra context like daily insights on how you're going, track long-term trends and averages, uncover relationships, and send it all in a weekly summary email too. Which habits go together? Correlations are the most powerful part of Exist. By finding relationships in your data, we can help you answer questions like: “What makes me happiest?” “What can I do to be more active?” “When am I most productive?” Track anything you can think of Some things in life can’t be counted by your watch or fitness tracker. With Exist, you can create your own data points to track anything else you want. Use it as a habit tracker, keep a record of medications and symptoms, or track subjective measures like energy and stress levels. Run experiments on your behaviour, and Exist will confirm or rule out your hunches.You can enter data as a quantity, time period, scale from 1–9, percentage, or time of day. Or just add a tag to a day as a quick way to say "this happened". We support the following Apple Health data from your iPhone: * Steps, active minutes, floors, cycling distance, stand hours, active energy burned * Sleep * Food and water (energy intake, fat, protein, etc.) * Workouts * Heartrate (max., resting, average, HRV) * Weight, body fat percentage, lean mass * Mindfulness sessions * Alcoholic drinks * Sexual activity * Menstrual flow Other data you can sync from your iPhone: * Location (Exist will use this to track weather data for you) * Events from your calendar Exist works best when connected to other services — add even more data by connecting any of these: * Fitbit * Oura * Garmin * Withings * Strava * RescueTime * Todoist * Toggl * Instapaper * GitHub * iCal Calendars (Google, iCloud) * Swarm by Foursquare * last.fm * Weather from Apple Weather Take Exist with you on your iOS device and see all your metrics, wherever you are. If you choose to continue using Exist after your free trial, you will need to purchase a monthly auto-renewing subscription. The current price for an Exist monthly subscription is 7.99 USD. Price will depend on your local currency. Payment will be charged to your iTunes Account at confirmation of purchase. Subscriptions automatically renew unless auto-renew is turned off at least 24-hours before the end of the current period. Your account will be charged for renewal within 24-hours prior to the end of the current period. You can manage your Subscription and turn off auto-renewal by going to your Account Settings after purchase. Privacy policy: https://exist.io/privacy/ Terms of use: https://exist.io/page/terms/ This app uses software licensed under the MIT License. Note: Continued use of GPS running in the background can dramatically decrease battery life.

Screenshots

OnSwitch for Philips Hue4 screens
Exist4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is rating: OnSwitch for Philips Hue at 4.7 against Exist's 4.1. OnSwitch for Philips Hue also leads on monetization model (freemium vs subscription) and ratings volume (9.6K vs 46). Exist's advantage is review sentiment (68% vs 57%). On price, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. OnSwitch for Philips Hue sells 9 in-app purchases, starting at $12.99 per month and Exist sells 1 in-app purchase, starting at $8.49 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

OnSwitch for Philips Hue holds the better App Store score, 4.7 against 4.1. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: OnSwitch for Philips Hue has 9.6K ratings behind it against 46, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 57% of OnSwitch for Philips Hue's written reviews are positive against 68% of Exist's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Both ship on a similar rhythm, roughly every 3 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 14, 2026 and October 8, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard5 real differences · 5 level
OnSwitch for Philips Hue versus Exist: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterOnSwitch for Philips HueExist
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.7 (9.6K ratings) — better4.1 (46 ratings)
Positive reviews56.9% of reviews68.4% of reviews — better
Number of ratings9.6K — better46
Update frequencyEvery 3 weeksEvery 3 weeks
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFreemium — betterSubscription
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad
Requires iOS16.0 — better18.0
Further details — not scored
Size88 MB14 MB
Age rating17+4+
DeveloperBuzzhaus, LLCHello Code Pty Ltd

Customer experience

OnSwitch for Philips Hue

All ratings9,567 ratings
Positive91.6%
Neutral3.5%
Negative4.9%
Written reviews371 reviews
Positive56.9%
Neutral8.1%
Negative35.0%

Exist

All ratings46 ratings
Positive76.1%
Neutral8.7%
Negative15.2%
Written reviews38 reviews
Positive68.4%
Neutral5.3%
Negative26.3%

Bugs and requests

OnSwitch for Philips Hue

Reported bugs

4 issues
  • Crashes on launch after update
  • Connectivity issues
  • Lights not responding correctly
  • Scenes not working as expected

Requested features

7 requests
  • Add support for LIFX bulbs
  • Allow customization of light groups
  • Add background mode/automation
  • Add Siri/HomeKit integration
  • Improve interface and organization
Show 2 more
  • Add more scenes and effects
  • Reduce pricing of individual scenes

Exist

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

In-app purchases

9 purchases

OnSwitch for Philips Hue

Subscriptions2
  • OnSwitch Premium$12.991 Month
  • OnSwitch Premium3 Days trial$35.991 Year
One-time7
  • Embers$0.99
  • Fireplace$1.99
  • Lightning$1.99
Show 4 more
  • Aurora$1.99
  • Nature Album$4.99
  • Science Fiction Album$5.99
  • Fireworks Album2 variants$7.99
1 purchases

Exist

Subscriptions1
  • Exist monthly subscription$8.491 Month

Questions

Is OnSwitch for Philips Hue free?
OnSwitch for Philips Hue is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Exist free?
Exist is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, OnSwitch for Philips Hue or Exist?
OnSwitch for Philips Hue is rated higher. OnSwitch for Philips Hue averages 4.7 out of 5 from 9.6K ratings, while Exist averages 4.1 from 46 ratings.
Do OnSwitch for Philips Hue or Exist have ads?
Neither OnSwitch for Philips Hue nor Exist shows ads.
Which is updated more often, OnSwitch for Philips Hue or Exist?
OnSwitch for Philips Hue ships an update every 3 weeks, and Exist every 3 weeks. Most recently, OnSwitch for Philips Hue was updated on October 14, 2026 and Exist on October 8, 2026.

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