Matter is already revolutionizing your smart home – here’s everything you need to know
Matter has already arrived at many of your favorite smart home gadgets, with more on the way. Here’s how it’ll change your tech for the better.
On October 4, 2022, the first version of Matter, a smart home standard, was made available to users and companies worldwide, and two years later, it’s everywhere.
Thanks to the Connectivity Standards Alliance, which is a consortium of over 500 companies, Matter is a way of having all your smart home devices work in harmony, and in one place — without having to use a deluge of apps to manage them all.
Matter can be found in smart lights, sensors, blinds, and plenty more. So much so, that we have a guide listing a bunch of them, making it easier for you to find Matter-compatible appliances. However, we’ve listed a few answers for you below, to help understand what Matter means, and how it will benefit you, especially if you’re about to buy a smart home appliance for the first time.
What is Matter?
(Image credit: Nanoleaf)
When you buy a smart home product, you may expect it to work with the other smart home devices you already own. This didn’t use to be the case — you would usually have to use the app that the product recommended in its instruction manual and go from there.
Using apps like Apple Home, which groups up all of your smart devices into one central overview where you can manage them wherever you are, would not work with products like this, leading to a lot of frustration.
This is where Matter comes in. It removes that annoyance, so the next smart home peripheral you buy works with Apple HomeKit, Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and more.
It’s important to mention that the standard has been updated several times since its launch in October 2022. For example, Matter 1.3, published in May 2024, enables support for more smart appliances, such as laundry dryers, washing machines, robot vacuums, and more. For now, this latest standard is supported by Apple’s latest software updates. This includes iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS Sequoia, watchOS 11 and tvOS 18.
How does Matter work?
(Image credit: Future)
Using Matter shouldn’t change how you currently interact with your smart home setup. Once the update rolls out to your devices and their smartphone apps, you should be able to continue using everything as you do now, you’ll just have more options for the gadgets you can add to your home. The only thing to watch out for is that different brands aren’t integrating their products with Matter in the same way.
Some, such as Phillips Hue, will make nearly all of their existing devices (as well as new ones) Matter compatible. Like Phillips, companies will do this via a software update – which for the Hue Bridge will happen in “Q1, 2023,” or January, February, or March – which will then bring the devices into the fold of the new standard.
There may be a few hiccups here and there – Philips is having to abandon the Philips Hue Play HDMI sync box and the dial of the Philips Hue Tap Dial Switch for now, and some settings may be reset by the change – but for the most part, the transition over to Matter will be quick and painless.
Unfortunately, this total adoption of Matter won’t be possible for every existing smart home device. For some brands – like Amazon and Google – very old models will be left behind.
If you have the latest smart device like the new Echo Dot (5th gen), the Google Nets Hub Max, or the Echo Show 10 (among others) then those should get the Matter update. However, models that are older than a few years won’t necessarily offer the same support. In those instances, you’ll either have to upgrade your smart speakers or forgo the benefits that Matter will bring.
Further, even some fairly recent models won’t update to Matter, with support for the new standard only coming to newly released smart home gadgets from some brands. That’s the case with Nanoleaf’s smart lighting – only the new Matter-compatible additions to its Essentials line will adopt the Matter standard.
That said, even if your older gadgets don’t get the update, your existing smart home setup should continue to work as well as ever. So, unless you were planning to upgrade it already there shouldn’t be a need for you to rush out and replace everything right away.
If you are looking to buy some upgrades though – then you’ll want to make sure what you’re buying does support Matter, otherwise, your new purchases could become outdated pretty quickly.