You have just fitted a Shelly BLU Wall Switch 4. All four buttons appear in the app, you can see the little hand register your click, and yet there is no option anywhere to give a button an action — and the scenes you create do nothing.
You are not doing it wrong. These are two separate problems that almost always arrive together, and it helps to take them apart.
Why the button does nothing
The BLU Wall Switch 4 is a Bluetooth-only remote: there is no wifi in it. When you press, it broadcasts a signal and its job ends there. It does not do anything — it only announces that you pressed it.
For that press to switch a light on, something has to be listening for the signal permanently and turn it into a command. That something is the gateway, and it is the piece that is usually missing.
Here is the trap that misleads everyone: with the app open and your phone nearby, the phone itself acts as an occasional listener. That is why you see the click on screen and assume all is well. Close the app or walk away and nobody is listening any more, so the press is lost. Hence a scene that seems to work sometimes and mostly does not.
What can act as the gateway
Either of these, with the Bluetooth gateway function switched on:
- A Shelly BLU Gateway, the USB dongle made for exactly this.
- Or any mains-powered Shelly with wifi and Bluetooth that is not a sensor: a 1 Mini Gen3, a 2PM Gen3, a Dimmer Gen3. If you already have one installed, you probably just need to enable the function.
If you only bought the remotes and have no mains-powered Shelly at all, that is why nothing works: there is no receiver. Better to know now than later.
Where the action is actually set
The second stumble is the app’s design: the action is not set on the button. The device screen shows status only — battery, last reporter, the most recent click and its dots — and nowhere to say “this button switches that light”. You cannot find it because it is not there.
The action lives in a scene, shaped like this:
- Condition (IF): button X on the BLU Wall Switch receives a press of type Y — single, double, triple or long.
- Action (THEN): device Z does whatever you want — on, off, up, down.
Each button takes four press types, so across the four you have up to 16 possible actions. You do not need to create them all: one scene per action you will genuinely use.
Step by step in the app
All of this happens in the Shelly Smart Control app. Bluetooth devices cannot be configured from the web interface — phone only.
- Have the gateway plugged in and online, with its Bluetooth gateway function enabled.
- Add the BLU Wall Switch 4 as a Bluetooth device and check it reports battery and status.
- Create a scene. For the condition, pick the remote, the button and the press type.
- For the action, pick the device and what it should do.
- Save it and test with the app closed. That is the only test worth anything: with the app open you are proving your phone can hear the remote, not that the installation works.
If it still does nothing after that
Check the gateway really is online and within range of the remote. And if the app will not even pair the remote in the first place, that is a different problem and it is nearly always the battery — we cover that separately.