1
Setup
Open All Groups and add a group
Go to Home, open the All Groups tab and tap the + button.
Groups
A group controls several devices at once from a single button: all the lights in the house or on one floor, the temperature on a whole floor, or a row of awnings moving together.
A room is where a device is; a group is what devices do together. A device belongs to exactly one room, but it can belong to several groups — which is why a single button for all the outdoor lighting has to be a group. Those lights are in four different rooms, and no amount of reorganising rooms will produce that button.
Groups appear in the room they belong to, can be added to the dashboard for quick access, and can be used in scenes.
2
Setup
Choose the device type
Light, Relay, Roller or Thermostat. Every device in the group has to be the same type — a relay and a dimmer cannot share a group, because no single control means the same thing to both.
The type also decides what the group’s control looks like: a roller group gets up and down buttons, a light group gets on, off and a brightness slider.
Where devices of different types have to act together, that is a scene, not a group.
3
Setup
Select the devices
Tick the devices to include. They are listed by room, and only devices of the type you chose appear.
Take them from as many rooms as you like — crossing rooms is the whole point of a group.
4
Setup
Choose the room
Where the group is filed, so it can be found again later. Use Global for a group that spans rooms — which most useful groups do.
5
Setup
Name it and save
Name the group after what it controls, not where it is — All roof windows rather than Upstairs. The room already says where.
The name matters more than it looks: it is what the customer says to a voice assistant, so it has to be a phrase they would actually use. Then pick a picture or a colour and save.
Tips and best practices
- Group by function, not by room. The room is already a room. A group earns its place when it crosses room boundaries.
- Use a group in scenes rather than listing devices. Adding a seventh light then means editing the group, not every scene that mentions it.
- Do not group everything. A group per floor and a group per function is useful; a group per pair of lamps is clutter nobody maintains.
- Roller groups need calibrated covers. An uncalibrated cover has no position, so it cannot follow a group command to 50 %.
- Devices act individually, not in lockstep. A group of covers with different travel times will not arrive together, and that is normal.
Video tutorial
Creating a group and controlling several devices from one control.
Loads YouTube when you press play. Watch on YouTube
By ShellyGuide on YouTube