If you have smart technology installed in your home, you know how vital your smart house control system is. You don’t just want your devices to work, you want them to talk to each other and work together, all with a simple and intuitive interface. Crafting powerful, easy-to- use control systems is Control4’s stock in trade, and they’ve made their interfaces even better with the release of the free OS 3 update.

OS 3 is a dramatic overhaul of your Control4 interface, adding an array of new features while changing and refining how you control the devices and systems throughout your home. As a leading home automation company in the United States and Canada, we’re here to break down everything you need to know about Control4 OS 3. We have offices from Calgary, AB to Scottsdale, AZ to CA and beyond.

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More customization

Every home and every home automation system is different, so your control system should reflect your personal tastes as well as how you use your devices. With OS 3, Control4 has made it easier than ever to customize your control interface to your exact specifications.

To start, you can now select from a range of preloaded wallpapers for every room in your house, or you can upload your own photos. This makes it easy to see which room you’re interacting with at any given moment, and if you use wall panels, you can take photos of the area around the panel to help it better blend in.

The biggest change in terms of customization, though, is the new Favorites system. With a few simple commands, you can select favorite rooms or favorite activities and access them in seconds from your home screen. You can also add, remove and rearrange icons on your control device, getting rid of clutter and giving you easier access to your most commonly used apps. Favorites are also personalized to individual devices, so you can have certain favorites on your phone and different favorites on a remote, wall panel, etc.

Faster, simpler controls

The Favorites system is just one way OS 3 makes controlling your devices simpler. Anything you’ve selected as a favorite can be controlled from the main Rooms Screen, from lights and shades to your security system and speakers. OS 3 also adds gesture control for things like your cable or satellite TV guide, as well as sliders for volume control.

Speaking of volume control, OS 3 makes managing your media throughout your home a breeze. When you select a room, an Active Media bar will instantly show you what’s playing and let you adjust the volume, change tracks or see the quality of the music being played.

On a broader level, the new Sessions system lets you see and control media throughout the house. You can adjust the volume in individual rooms or across the system, add or remove rooms from different media Sessions, or turn different devices on or off. Now if you want to turn off your outdoor speakers but leave music playing everywhere else, you can use Sessions to simplify the process.

Odds and ends

Control4 says OS 3 includes more than 1,000 new features and interaction enhancements, but we don’t have space for them all here. There are a few more highlights worth mentioning, though.

OS 3 includes support for Master Quality Authenticated (MQA) music streaming, providing the absolute highest quality of audio from services like Tidal for discerning listeners. The app icons have also been revamped to make them larger and the text easier to read. And new filtering options make it easy to see the status of individual systems like your lights, security system, and more across the home.

As you can see, OS 3 is a significant change to how you use your Control4 system, with hundreds of improvements we haven’t even mentioned yet. To learn more, visit our contact page and give us a call.