Can't add Hue bulbs in Google Home app

Okay so after getting in touch with Philips Hue support I've come up with somewhat of a workaround, but it's far from ideal.

I created a new Google account, added it in the Google Home app and then created a new Home. After going through the steps to link Philips Hue, it did the same thing as before where the app would take me back to the "Set up a device" screen, spin for a couple of seconds and then just stay on that screen. I thought the linking process had failed again but when I refreshed the home page of the Home app a few times, the bulbs all magically showed up.

So, all good right? No.

It seems that in the process of doing this, I somehow completely bricked my main Google Account. When I try to switch to this account in the Home app, the app isn't able to load the home screen, settings or anything else. It gives me the "not connected to the internet" error even though I'm clearly connected to the internet and it has absolutely no problem doing anything when I switch back to the newly created Google Account. The app is completely unresponsive on my main Google account. I can't add or unlink device, can't view the devices, nothing.

So since I'm unable to unlink my other devices (Google Home and Mi box) from my main account, I've found nothing better than just factory resetting these devices and adding them to the new Google account. Tomorrow I'll check out if there's any way to reset my main Google account in order to get all the devices back on there, and if I do, I'll be sure to update this post.

EDIT: Okay, I finally got my issues resolved. I had two different issues and I'll describe how I fixed them here:

• Issue #1: The issue where nothing on the Home app loaded when I logged into it with my main account, however, no problems if I logged into it with a secondary account. This issue is most definitely a Google server-side issue, which somehow corrupts Google accounts. After hours with support they finally had a "Senior Specialist from the Google Home support team" contact me. He instructed me to create a feedback report with a special keyword in it so he could find my report. 24 hours later, I logged in to the Home app with my main account and everything loaded again. I could delete all the corrupt Homes and could once again link/unlink devices... except Hue bulbs. The Home app still didn't want to connect to my Philips Hue account. That's issue #2, fixed that aswell. If you have Issue #1, I suggest contacting support and stressing very strongly that this is a Google server-side issue and that only a Google engineer/specialist can fix your account.

• Issue #2: The issue where you link your Hue account in the Home app but no bulbs show up. The issue seems to be different for everyone, but this is how I fixed it:

1. Force stop the Google Home app (Settings --> Apps -- Google Home --> Force stop), but do not delete cache or data (at least I didn't).
2. Go to account.meethue.com/apps and delete everything that has "google" in its name for both "Cloud connected apps" and "Home network apps".
3. Open the Google Home app, click on "Add" and create a new Home with a name of your choice. Don't worry, you can add the bulbs to another home than this one and you can delete this Home after these steps.
4. On the home screen, click on "Add" once again. Go to "Set up a device" --> "Have something already set up" --> Find "Philips Hue" and click on it. You will now be redirected to either your browser or the Hue app which has an embedded browser (depends on your settings). You will see a prompt asking to link Google with Hue. Click "Yes".
5. From here on everything needs to be done EXACTLY as described. After clicking "Yes" in Step 4, you will now be redirected to the list of services in the Google home app, with a spinning icon on top of it. After a few seconds it will redirect you to the "Set up" screen, still with a spinning icon on top of the screen.
6. When the spinning/loading has stopped, click on "Have something already set up?". If your screen looks like this with Philips Hue under "Linked services", you are done and can skip to step 10. But, since you are reading this, most likely you've done this 100 times without luck, and your screen will look like this (No "Linked services" tab). So here comes the part that fixed it for me.
7. While still on the screen that has all the services listed, click on your Android Overview Button (the one you press to list all your opened apps, next to the Home button) and your second most recent app should be either your browser or your Hue app. Either way, from the preview you should be able to see that this app is still showing the prompt from Step 4. Click on this app to open it, and click on the "Yes" button like you did in Step 4. Once again, you should be going through the whole redirect and loading process described in Step 5. Once again, click on "Have something already set up?" and check if Hue is now linked as described in Step 6. If all is good, you should now see Hue in your "Linked services".
8. Go to the Home screen. You should see your bulbs show up there. If you want to, you can now delete the Home you created in Step 3, since the bulbs are linked to your account, not to a specific Home (yet). You can now click on their icons and add them to the Home of your choice.

[deleted]

I had the same issue,

My solution was

1. turn off all lights/google home (mini) devices
2. turn off hue bridge
3. clear google linkage on My Hue website
4. unlink other members from your google home account
5. clear Google home / Chrome cache from phone
6. restart phone
7. restart all devices
8. create a new home 'test'
9. link phillip hue account under home 'test'

Took me 3 days to figure it out, there are probably quite a few unnecessary steps in between, but it works at the end.

I've had the same problem for months. Google home doesn't detect two of my hue bulbs.

Had the same issues the evening and went through these steps to get them working. No idea what fixed it but try the last one or all of them until it works.

Tried multiple times to get it to work with my phone. Always doing nothing.

Went to my hue account deleted the accesses tried again.

No luck, tried from another phone with another account.

No luck deleted my home group and recreated. No luck.

Had the second device user invite me to her home group. No luck.

Tried to create a new group named lights and there were my lights.

Switched back to my home group and added them to the right rooms.

Issue resolved. Hopefully when I add more lights I will have no issues.

Having the same issue now. It says it has successfully been added, but the hue isnt in the linked apps section. Tried 100+ times. Called Google and they have no idea and hope it gets fixed too. I wouldn't have unlinked my hue account if I had known it was a known issue!!! So frustrating that they dont tell us anything upfront. Just let us find out on our own

Wow I was getting ready to order hue starter too

Not so much now!

Was working brillianly for about 10months, then I cleared all paired devices to kind of rearranging them nicely. Little did I know of this insanely frustrating bug n not disturb it.

Ok i got mine to be detected again. I deleted all the hue lights an accessories in my Philips Hue account / app. Then went to meethue.com on the pc to delete the bridge and everything in apps section. Then i deleted both Google Home and Philips Hue app from phone/tab. I installed and set up Google Home app first. **This is the important step - install and login your Philips Hue app and link you Hue Bridge but stop there. DON'T setup any of the Hue lights and accessories yet. Now go back into your Google Home app, select and link your Philips Hue account. If not linked after a couple of tries, reboot your phone/tablet and your modem, router n try again. Once linked, then proceed to setup lights in the Hue App. Key point is to get the Google Home to link with Philips Hue first, the lights eventually gets detected using the sync or update command.

Just wanted to add my 2 cents for people that may find this in the future - I had exactly the same issues as OP, but these steps still didn't work for me. I was trying to configure Home on a Galaxy S9, for reference.

What worked for me was installing Home on my android tablet (Galaxy S 10.5, Android 6.0) and connecting Hue to Home there, and it worked. The lights show up in Home on my phone now and work great. So something else to try if you are still stuck, an alternate device.