Matter is a new standard that aims to fix the smart home’s biggest problems: interoperability, reliability, security, and being easy to use. With Matter, your smart lights, smart lock, smart thermostat, and other smart devices will all work with together, easily. All the major smart home platforms are on board — Apple Home, Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Samsung SmartThings — and so are almost all the big device brands, from Philips Hue and Lutron Caseta to August, Ikea, and TP-Link. If you see the Matter logo on a product, you know it will work with any other Matter-compatible gadget in your home.
I upgraded an Eve Energy smart plug and Eve motion and contact sensors to Matter and controlled them simultaneously in Google Home, Apple Home, and Samsung SmartThings. But I needed two phones and two days to get it all working.
iOS 16.2 is out now with support for Matter (and the first Matter devices updates have arrived) so a reminder that the simplest HomeKit bugfix if things go sideways is to sign whatever Apple TV (or HomePod) serves as your home hub out of iCloud, restart it, and sign in again to download a fresh HomeKit config. This fixed all my broken automations over the weekend!
That’s why I’m psyched that The Verge’s Jennifer Pattison Tuohy has updated her Matter explainer with a comprehensive list of every device that’ll be updated to support Matter, plus every upcoming device we know about. Don’t get suckered by deals on bad tech when better stuff is almost here.
Matter is a new standard that promises to fix smart home interoperability — but can it deliver?
Your burning questions about the new smart home standard, answered
The smart home standard is open for certification at last. We could see Matter devices in our homes as soon as this month.
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