You are misunderstanding what you can currently do with the app and what the new remote access feature is offering. Nothing is changing with what you can do with the app for free. You can still turn lights off and on using a dashboard remotely You just can't administer your setup so you can't get to this page to change anything.
With the new paid remote access you can get to that page remotely.
The HE Mobile App previously (until 4 days ago per change record on Apple Store) used to allow direct access to the App settings without pay-wall. This has been changed to a $2.99/m = $36/y fee. So seriously? You want me to pay $36 so I can access App settings when things again do not work because HE changed the coding and the alarm system goes haywire (like the last two days when they messed up the geolocation settings again).
If accessing through port forwarding is such a concern to HE, they should build it in to protect the system and their reputation, not come up with a new way to charge customers money.
This is, like Wink, like SmartThings and betrays the original lure of having a paid and done system. It would be more palatable if they would instead include actual new features such as connecting Arlo cameras.
And no, I am not misunderstanding the "feature", I am understanding the business decision that is not customer friendly. I am aware of security possible security issues, but then again, password-based protection is relative as well given large pools of passwords out in the wild.
Only when your mobile device was on your LAN. And this free access continues to be available.
Unfortunately you are.
However, if you are on your LAN, and cannot access it, then the likelihood is high that you're looking in the wrong place. The menu structure was changed as described by @bobbyD
I am pretty certain I was able to change App settings on the Hub through the Mobile App when not directly on the same LAN.
No, that was never available. Which was why there was a demand for Remote Admin, which Hubitat responded to.
In the interim, a lot of users setup their own access methods - such as a VPN.
Btw, I am also on an iPhone, and know for certain that I could not access either of my Hubitats unless connected to my home W/LAN.
Edit - hereās some screenshots. Iām currently at work, connected by VPN to my home network, and can access my hubs just fine. The first shot indicates Iām not subscribed to Remote Admin ...
Without the VPN, this wouldnāt work, and didnāt used to either.
FWIW, there are a couple users that have reported being able to access their hubās local admin UI pages in the mobile app while not at home (apparently without a VPN or other remote access solution running).
However, if that turned out to be true and not some kind of misunderstanding/alternate explanation, then itās because there was a glitch/bug that made it possible; as I and several others have mentioned in this thread, it 100% should not have been.
@schuppenhauer Iām not sure what itāll take to convince you that Hubitat Inc. isnāt out to screw you just because Wink did. I donāt speak for them, so maybe they are just biding their time and canāt wait to nickel and dime us.
But the fact remains, the two subscription services Hubitat recently rolled out are completely optional, and they both offer something that was not previously possible using only built-in features of the hub.
No, this has never been possible. Without Remote Admin, the only way to access the settings of the hub is via the LAN with a local LAN ip address.
@schuppenhauer. No features have been removed from Hubitat. The subscriptions add completely new features.
Personally, Iām okay with reasonably priced subscriptions because I think Hubitat needs some kind of revenue stream, other than just the one time sale of the hub, to remain a viable business. If I canāt afford a few dollars a month for the subscription, I probably canāt afford my automation hobby. However, you donāt have to pay any subscriptions at all, and you still have a great home automation system with Hubitat.
Welcome to Hubitat! You will find this community willing to help you with any questions you have.
I am new in this HE world, so I spent some time on the app, in and out of the LAN. It worked out of the LAN, too. Until the latest update, when subscription option appeared.
There was a different text written, but I worked through that button, out of the LAN.
It didnāt. Unless you had setup your own VPN.
Haha. Yep. I'm a precaution to the wind sort of fellow myself.
You don't understand what you are talking about. You were never able to access you apps via the mobile app. That has only been an option since very shortly before they introduced the remote admin feature. You can access them via the mobile app free if you are on the same network as the hub (all it does in either case is open an external web browser to that page), it's not an app in its self.
That having been said you can still use a VPN to remotely access your hub for free. Granted it's not part of the app itself, but as stated above all the app does is open an external browser window to that same page. So you don't loose any functionality (well except the cloud back up) and you save some money. My issue with the remote admin service is not that they charge for it (though as stated I can do 99% for free) but that the charge is per hub rather than per account. If they changed it to per account I might reconsider it.
The discussion in this thread died off several months ago and Iām not sure thereās anything productive left to say here. Particularly since Hubitat staff recently restricted the ability to directly access a hub from the internet with port forwarding in response to reports of multiple hubs being accessible without even a password to prevent unauthorized users from logging in.
@bobbyD please consider closing this thread.
Yeah, Nah, in retrospect I am pretty sure I was able to access the hub from outside, it may have been for a limited time while the HE team was still trying to figure out so they can shut this all down. The spurious comments from others support this. They also support that the HE team continues to struggle with this remote access without paying. The thing is finicky, because I can also be on the home network and still the app thinks I am remote accessing, so the background comms is not clean. Anyhow, yes there are ways to circumvent, but the proper solution would be to allow that from the get go.
Based on what I recall reading in a couple threads earlier this year, I can only guess that perhaps a limited number of users were affected by some combination of factors that may have allowed them to access their hubās admin UI remotely through the hubitat mobile app. If that is in fact what was happening.
As @bravenel said above, it should never have been possible to do this.
There are several ways to fully access the hub remotely and securely, only one of which requires an optional subscription that Hubitat rolled out earlier this year.
Respectfully, I donāt believe that is true. I have two hubs (actually, three, one is in the box) and I accessed them both remotely while traveling to California and back this past September, using the single remote admin account. Itās the Hub Protect / cloud backup service that is per hub.
Yep I have just the remote admin service and it works great. I also have VPNs as well but like the convenience of RA.. also nice to be supporting HE if I can.
Remote Admin is a one fee per account, for all of the hubs registered for that account.
I would say that even IF you were somehow doing this, it wasn't intentional. And it wasn't so Hubitat can "shut this all down". Having this open would be a security nightmare, so I am almost positive that this was either a bug, or just some fluke that apparently allowed this for a few users in the first place.
None of this was malicious, and it wasn't a feature that they took away. It never was supposed to have been there in the first place. It wasn't an advertised feature, nor will you find any documentation or announcements promoting that they allowed unlimited remote access.
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