I’ve had a LIFX Z Strip for a few years. I recently moved and changed router, and was unable to pair the device again. After going insane for 3 hours, forever being stuck on “Preparing Device” while pairing my WiFI with LIFX Z Strip, I finally figured out the issue. It was a combination of a lot of small things that needed to be fixed.
This is a complete guide about all known LIFX WiFi solutions that are known to be necessary and which 100% work. It should be very helpful to anyone with connection issues!
Here’s what you need to do, to give the LIFX devices the best setup:
Preparation
- Turn off your VPN on your Android/iOS device. This is THE most important fix. With the VPN connection enabled, I spent 3 hours failing to connect the lights to the internet. Turning the VPN off fixed the LIFX light connection instantly. I had tried 3 routers, several versions of the LIFX app, and tons of WiFi settings changes, and was ready to buy Philips Hue until I suddenly realized that the VPN on the phone was the last remaining potential problem. I hadn’t thought of the VPN and it turned out to be the final thing preventing *pairing*. My VPN actually properly passes through all local network traffic and the lights *can* be controlled locally despite the VPN *after* the lights have been synced/added, but the *initial* adding/syncing *doesn’t* work while the VPN is connected, so it’s clear that the LIFX app makes incorrect network assumptions whenever a VPN is involved during onboarding, so keep that in mind. There are however other issues that you need to take care of too, below…
- Depending on your WiFi router, you MAY have to disable “band steering” on your router or alternatively split your WiFI into 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz with separate names. As mentioned in many guides such as this great one, and in the official LIFX documentation (here), and in the LIFX app itself, the LIFX devices can only connect to 2.4 GHz. If you have the same SSID for 2.4 and 5, then your router is able to use a non-standardized feature known as “band steering” which will prevent certain devices (such as the LIFX lights) from connecting on the 2.4 GHz band (the only thing hte lights can connect to) if the router *believes* they’re able to use the faster 5 GHz band instead. If this issue affects you, the LIFX devices may LOOK like they’re sometimes successfully connecting, but they MAY periodically get “Cloud: Disconnected” after power-cycling (for me it disconnected twice a day). If this happens to you, then you need to go into your router and look for a “band steering” setting and disable it. If your router doesn’t have that setting, then you need to rename your SSIDs to separate names for your 2.4 and 5 GHz WiFi networks, which will automatically disable band steering (since that feature can only be active if the SSIDs, passwords and security modes are totally identical on the 2.4 and 5 GHz networks). Getting rid of band steering either as a setting or by renaming the two SSIDs instantly solves all random LIFX device disconnection issues for a lot of people, me included. Personally, I had a router and bought my LIFX Z Strip, had endless disconnections twice a day for months, then I changed to separate SSIDs and instantly got a stable connection for a year. Then I bought a new router and had forgotten about the SSID issue and instantly had disconnection issues with my LIFX Z Strip again and thought the light was broken, and then I suddenly remembered the SSID issue, changed to two separate SSIDs, and voila perfect connection yet again. It’s unclear whether the LIFX device’s WiFi communication does something weird that tricks the router into thinking 5 GHz is supported, or if the router’s band steering implementation is too aggressive in some routers. But either way, it’s the most likely culprit for this particular disconnection issue, so try this if you’re having disconnections. (Sidenote: There has been a persistent myth that 5 GHz networks with the same SSID interfere with the LIFX lights and confuse them about what frequency to connect to, but that is physically impossible because the LIFX antenna is tuned to 2.4 GHz and doesn’t see any 5 GHz networks at all, so the actual reason for issues with identical SSIDs is most likely band steering, as explained here and in discussions below.)
- Go into your Phone’s Settings and FORGET every nearby WiFi network (delete all saved passwords for networks NEAR you; other network passwords that aren’t in your phone’s vicinity can be kept). This is very important, because there’s a stage in the LIFX app where it will connect your phone back to your regular WiFi again, after it’s done sending WiFi settings to your light, and if you don’t forget saved passwords, your phone will connect to a random local network. This will cause the LIFX app to say “blablabla your light and phone are on different networks, you need to connect your phone to the same WiFi SSID”, which then breaks the pairing process. To avoid that, be sure that your phone doesn’t have passwords saved for any other nearby networks. Note for iOS users: On iOS, you can actually “disable auto-join” for specific networks instead of deleting them. There’s no such thing on Android unfortunately, so Android users will have to delete the networks.
Go to the LIFX Cloud Devices page and delete your light if it has previously been paired.This is the page athttps://cloud.lifx.com/deviceswhich will list all your devices. Manually deleting the device from your account can help it pair itself again. Otherwise it can get stuck and fail the app pairing process.Update: A commenter below said that deleting the device isn’t necessary. I had seen the advice from a LIFX employee in another thread, so I’m keeping the bullet point here just in case. But be aware that it seems like keeping the device registration in the cloud is fine. So skip this point unless it’s your last resort/attempt at fixing things.- If your light has been connected to another (or incorrect) network: Reset the light itself back to factory defaults, to make it forget its current WiFI network (if any) and to prepare it for syncing/onboarding/adding. Read the official instructions, but basically you just have to unplug and plug in the light 5 times with slow (~3 seconds powered-on each time), steady intervals. It will then give you a flash/color coded signal to let you know that it has been reset. Read the official instructions to know exactly what to do. Note: If the light’s own fake “WiFI access point” disappears/doesn’t exist in your phone’s list of WiFi networks, this indicates that the light is paired to a network and needs to be reset in order to become pairable again. You may also have to do this reset again if you fail the onboarding process by uploading incorrect WiFi SSID/password settings for the device.
- Connect your phone to the desired WiFi SSID that you want the lights to use. This is extremely important. Various guides wrongly say “connect your phone to the light’s built-in access point” etc, but that is bad advice (the app will take care of connecting you to the light *when* it’s necessary). The LIFX app expects you to first connect to the WiFi network that you want the lights to use, and ensure that you’re using a 2.4 GHz capable SSID. Ensure that your phone learns the WiFi password for the network, so that it will be able to successfully auto-reconnect to your WiFi network later, when the app’s pairing is complete (see next section in this guide). Because the app’s syncing process for the lights involves your phone re-connecting back to the exact same WiFi SSID as the lights after the attempt at pairing is made, and things won’t work if your phone is on another SSID! The network names for your phone and light must match!
Pairing
- Do all of the preparation above. All of it.
- Log into your LIFX account in the app on your phone, if you aren’t already logged on.
- Optional: Delete the light from the app too if it was previously registered, but others (in the comments) have said that they didn’t have to delete the lights before re-adding them. If you have any issues syncing, you may try deleting them though, which is done by tapping on the light, then going into the “…” settings menu, then “Light Settings”, and finally “Remove Device From Cloud” at the bottom. You can also verify that it’s gone from the cloud website afterwards (see “Preparation” section above).
- Click the plus symbol and begin the “Add New Device: New Light” process.
- Wait for the app to find your light and tap on its name.
- The app should ask you for the WiFi password for your phone’s currently active WiFi SSID connection. Give it the password.
- Wait. For me, it took maybe 30-60 seconds until the lights suddenly flashed black and then came back on. And then a further 30-60 seconds until the app displayed that the pairing process was complete. Other people have said that it took them about 4 minutes, which sounds very high to me. I would not wait longer than 5 minutes. If it’s not done pairing after 5 minutes, then cancel the process, reset the LIFX device again, and edit your WiFI settings to fix your network (see Preparation section again), because the LIFX device is clearly not able to connect in that case.
- The app will then check that your phone’s WiFI SSID is the same as the light’s WiFi SSID. If they don’t match, the app will break/abort here and you’ll have to redo the process (by reading Preparation above to ensure you’re on the same SSID as the light).
- After the connection is complete, you simply have to answer which house and room and device name you want to give to the light.
- The end. Voila! You’ll have paired lights, and they won’t randomly disconnect in the future. Enjoy!
- Bonus: If you were using a VPN on your phone, like me, you can now enable it again. The device control still works. It’s just the initial pairing that goes to hell if you have a VPN, due to poor LIFX application coding.