Review Insights · App Store
Elgato Control Center
Corsair Memory, Inc. · 3,625 ratings · ★ 4.5
4.5
★★★★★
3,625 ratings
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Top complaints - extracted from 67 negative reviews
Recurring phrases mined from 1-2★ reviews. The bigger the percentage, the more users have the same problem. Fix the top 2-3 in your version and you have product-market fit on day one.
1
"lights"
26 negative reviews mention this · 39% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Horrible. Sometimes imthe lights show up, sometimes they don't. When they do its because I'm turning on and turning off the wifi and opening and closing the app til it decides to show it. It's annoying." - P33jay23
2
"light"
26 negative reviews mention this · 39% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Horrible. Sometimes imthe lights show up, sometimes they don't. When they do its because I'm turning on and turning off the wifi and opening and closing the app til it decides to show it. It's annoying." - P33jay23
3
"connect"
18 negative reviews mention this · 27% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Firmware. You updated the firmware. Now the lights will not connect anymore. Thanks for a useless purchase." - Nerdmaster49444
4
"elgato"
16 negative reviews mention this · 24% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Rarely works. I’ve tried this so many times and it just isn’t reliable. It works off and on. Elgato products are good but software is very janky and unreliable." - ryanlevander
5
"work"
14 negative reviews mention this · 21% of all complaints
★★★★★ "IoT vlan failure. This app is unusable on a network segmented by vlans. I keep my IoT devices on a separate vlan away from my personal devices. This app requires them to all be on the same vlan to work. No option to add devices by IP." - Rehpa
6
"control"
13 negative reviews mention this · 19% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Key Lights can’t stay on WiFi. I have two key lights and two key light airs and at any given time only about half are controllable without a manual reset." - 1212asdf1212ghjkl
7
"wifi"
11 negative reviews mention this · 16% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Horrible. Sometimes imthe lights show up, sometimes they don't. When they do its because I'm turning on and turning off the wifi and opening and closing the app til it decides to show it. It's annoying." - P33jay23
8
"every"
11 negative reviews mention this · 16% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Terrible closed ecosystem. This is a horrible, flakey app which disconnects every other day. And because the app is so embarrassingly buggy, it is incredibly frustrating there’s no option to connect to HomeKit, Google Home or Amazon." - Ch1llnc
9
"doesn"
11 negative reviews mention this · 16% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Very sometimey. The app is great. But it just doesn’t connect all the time… especially recently, I’ve had to re-sync my lights several times… don’t fix what’s not broken" - StopFixingThings
10
"software"
11 negative reviews mention this · 16% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Rarely works. I’ve tried this so many times and it just isn’t reliable. It works off and on. Elgato products are good but software is very janky and unreliable." - ryanlevander
11
"connection"
11 negative reviews mention this · 16% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Connection issues all the time…. Reset, reset and reset… every single time…" - Scarfacecjm
12
"update"
11 negative reviews mention this · 16% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Firmware. You updated the firmware. Now the lights will not connect anymore. Thanks for a useless purchase." - Nerdmaster49444
📋 All 67 negative reviews
Every 1-2★ review we fetched. Use the copy button to grab them all for your own analysis (paste into ChatGPT/Claude with a prompt like "summarize core user problems, group by theme, ignore bugs, focus on missing features").
IoT vlan failure
This app is unusable on a network segmented by vlans. I keep my IoT devices on a separate vlan away from my personal devices. This app requires them to all be on the same vlan to work. No option to add devices by IP.
Horrible
Sometimes imthe lights show up, sometimes they don't. When they do its because I'm turning on and turning off the wifi and opening and closing the app til it decides to show it. It's annoying.
Pairing is so hard
Rarely works to pair key lights breaks all the time
Firmware
You updated the firmware. Now the lights will not connect anymore.
Thanks for a useless purchase.
Thanks for a useless purchase.
Terrible closed ecosystem
This is a horrible, flakey app which disconnects every other day. And because the app is so embarrassingly buggy, it is incredibly frustrating there’s no option to connect to HomeKit, Google Home or Amazon.
Flaky
Flaky app and lights. Sometimes hard to get to connect. Annoying app wants you to rate it and will keep annoying you until you do. I would buy something else if i could go back in time.
No Accessory Found
Half the time when I open the app it won’t find any of my keylights, or it may only find one. Sometimes happens from both of my phones on WiFi sometimes it is just one. The PC app works fine.
App never connects
Never been able to connect my lights and get them to work properly. Disappointment
Key Lights can’t stay on WiFi
I have two key lights and two key light airs and at any given time only about half are controllable without a manual reset.
Literally doesn’t work
Bought a $150 el gato key light. Plugged it in and downloaded app to connect it. Does no connect, and there is no available information as to why or how to fix. I want my $150 back
Rarely works
I’ve tried this so many times and it just isn’t reliable. It works off and on. Elgato products are good but software is very janky and unreliable.
Doesn’t work
The app and instructions are terrible. It can’t find my new light when I try to add it. What a waste of money.
Connection issues all the time…
Reset, reset and reset… every single time…
Trash. Unreliable connection (sept 2024)
Since getting my elgato air lights a year ago, the connection has been trash even across app software updates. The app used to lose connection once every 2 weeks or so requiring manual restart of the light. With the most recent update, the app needs to restart every 2 times I turn on/off the light. This is trash. I use the light daily
Have to kill app every time to connect
Have a key light mini. Every time I leave the app and come back the controls become unresponsive. I have to kill the app and reopen for it to work again every time. Incredibly annoying for what I paid for the light.
Need to restart
Constantly need to restart the app, otherwise it does nothing to the connected lamp.
Even worse after latest update
Lights have never worked well. Control Center can’t find them half the time and they made them impossible to turn on manually (who does that?) The latest firmware update was supposed to improve things and instead they got way worse, going from working half the time to maybe 1/10 the time. I’m done with elgato. I recommend steering clear and buying lights that can be physically turned on without relying on a buggy app.
Utterly Unreliable
A very disappointing experience with an otherwise satisfactory product. A shame i’ve spent hundreds of dollars on lights and am unable to use them due to a malfunctioning application. Seems like an extreme oversight by Elgato, who I’ve previously been very happy with.
The app fails to recognize the lights that have been connected and reconnected to the correct network. Utterly unintuitive and unreliable.
The app fails to recognize the lights that have been connected and reconnected to the correct network. Utterly unintuitive and unreliable.
Unreliable
I have a Key Light and most of the time I need to reset it. Very unreliable. Constantly troubleshooting to see why the light disappears from the app. Why can’t we have physical controls on your lights rather than relying on trash software and Wi-Fi connection?
Key light mini
Doesn’t keep collection, useless, no updates
At one time, these worked
They used to work flawlessly. Came on immediately, turned off immediately. Now they only sometimes connect, sometimes will not go off, and minor brightness adjustments are tricky as the touch bar jumps around. Disappointed.
Always having to reset
The lights never stay connected to either mobile or desktop apps. I’m incredibly frustrated with this entire product line because of bad software.
App missing from settings menu completely
I’ve tried uninstalling and reinstalling the app several times, but for some reason, it remains missing from the settings list of apps.
Elgato is just trash
Everything I own, I regret buying from Elgato.
Horrible
Your software is terrible. It doesn’t work consistently at all. I’d never buy another Elgato product again.
iOS and Mac app are worthless
The app almost never connects to the lights on either platform. On my PC it’s rock solid every time but most of the time I don’t want to turn on my PC just to control the lights. I’ve done all the troubleshooting instructions from Elgato directly and from people on various forums and it continues to be a problem. After reading reviews here it seems this has been an issue for years with no real improvement. Had I purchased the lights myself I’d be returning them but since I cannot I just deal with it.
Never Connected to WiFi when I need it
Resetting the Wi-Fi connection on my light has become a daily chore and at this point I am over Elgato and its obviously apathetic nature
The App has issues
The light is good fixture and size and when connected provides a good experience. However the app loses connection with the light at almost every use. Very frustrating and the updates to the app are few and far between.
Program updates
Every time there’s a update EVERYTHING goes wonky. Have to reconnect everything, my stream deck deletes ALL my macros as well as the back ups. Product works great but also is terrible.
No widgets
Needs widgets
Unreliable
My lights hardly ever connect and I’d rather not spend 15 minutes troubleshooting when there are much more reliable products for much cheaper. Such a shame.
Connectivity
It was working one day and next day it’s gone from the control center app. I can’t even reset the light or reconnect. It looked so good when it was working but I’ve literally tried everything and it’s not working
Slow to connect to device.
The app often takes several minutes to detect my device (on or off) when both are on the same Wi-Fi network and even after force-quitting the app.
Good night 😭😭
I literally bought this thinking it would run off my poor celular data bc a broke girl ain’t got no WiFi and now I’m very mad bc I bought this for no reason and got excited for no reason 😭💀💀
Absolutely infuriating
Only detects lights 15% of the time now. Lights fail to update firmware every time. I would have been better of with a real LED panel and a remote controller smart outlet. Nothing about this experience has been anywhere near the expectation for the price.
Constantly can't connect to the lights
I have to reset the lights every time to control them. Will be selling them off and buying more consistent lighting
Fix the app please, I’m losing my mind trying to connect my Elgato air light
I don’t know how this app has 4.3 ratings out of 5 this is the worst app never connects and every time I get on the app it keeps showing no accessory found but it connects to my wifi smh, just terrible.
No Siri Shortcuts?
How is it possible to not have simple Siri Shortcuts??
Key lights continue to lose connectivity
When I first bought my two key lights, they would connect very quickly. Nothing in my environment has changed except for the Elgato updates. Now I have to turn the key light lights on and then back to neutral to get control center on my iPhone and on my Mac mini to connect to them. This makes me hesitant to acquire the stream deck as I don’t think it is going to maintain continuous conductivity.
Latest update broke connection
No matter what troubleshooting i do, the elgato key light air no longer appears in the app.
App seems useless now
Idk what’s happened to the app but since the last update it doesn’t detect my lights in the control center I’ve had to install the pc version just to have any control over my lights
Why do I need an app?
Just to do basic functions. I bought two key light air and out of the box it says I need more software. I understand Corsair now owns Elgato but this would’ve been a great opportunity to pair with iCue software as another option or at the least give me some options behind the lights. Dim, bright, and blindingly bright.
I’m happy I can use these as they are - but I shouldn’t need to use wi-fi or an app, and when I do try and connect, the light turns off and then I get an error, which prevents me from using the app.
Seems like I’m not the only user having the same issues.
I just purchased these lights as of this writing. So far not happy with Elgato’s decision, here.
In the mean time - I’m going to browse Reddit and see if I can find a solution.
I’m happy I can use these as they are - but I shouldn’t need to use wi-fi or an app, and when I do try and connect, the light turns off and then I get an error, which prevents me from using the app.
Seems like I’m not the only user having the same issues.
I just purchased these lights as of this writing. So far not happy with Elgato’s decision, here.
In the mean time - I’m going to browse Reddit and see if I can find a solution.
I want to love this but…
This is crazy you spend over 200 dollars for a light that can’t even connect to your wifi 😒
Worthless.
The worst.
Please fix connectivity problems.
Windows Desktop Control Center works fine. The iOS app worked fine too but suddenly stopped working. After it stopped working I updated the software and the lights’ firmware.
I see the app that requires a monthly subscription to control accessories has high reviews but this free app has poor reviews. I just want to control my Elgato Key Lights. Please fix.
I see the app that requires a monthly subscription to control accessories has high reviews but this free app has poor reviews. I just want to control my Elgato Key Lights. Please fix.
Great hardware. Crappy software.
Same problem others have noted about the Keylight Air not staying connected to Control Center. And this is the latest 1.3.0. (57) version of Corsair Control Center their support team said had connectivity improvements. It worked for a month then for no apparent reason Control Center was not connected anymore. None of the troubleshooting steps on their site helped. I’m able to connect the Keylight Air wifi on my Smartphone, but their app is clueless and doesn’t see the light. I’m starting to see the light and will probably send these back.
Just terrible
This app probably has one of the worst price of hardware to quality of software ratios of all time. Where to begin: intermittent connectivity, no support for HomeKit, no support for automations or shortcuts, no widgets, no extensions, no lighting presets (adjust sliders and remember your settings every time). Oh and best of all you have to use it because the stupid light has no controls on it. Incredible that they can get away with this.
Zero Stars if it was possible
I’ve been using Elgato Keylights for three years now. I can not recommend them because of massive connection issues. The team responsible for it should be replaced from the ground up.
Needs HomeKit and Shortcuts Integration
The lights and app work fine for me, but missing HomeKit integration annoys me daily.
Latest update ruined my connections
The latest firmware and app updates have made my lights wireless function useless. You can no longer control them remotely. Sometimes one of the two lights connects but not the other. I now have to power them off with the switch instead of the app. It only works when my computer is on and I control it with the stream deck. Pretty frustrating. I wish I could downgrade my firmware to when it actually worked.
+ 17 more in the clipboard copy
Sentiment summary
88%
Positive (4-5★)
3%
Neutral (3★)
9%
Negative (1-2★)