What Matter is and why it changes the smart home

What Matter is

Matter is a connectivity standard for the smart home, built on IP and developed by the Connectivity Standards Alliance together with the industry’s major companies.

Its purpose is to reduce fragmentation. Before Matter, every manufacturer spoke its own language: combining a bulb from one brand, a thermostat from another, and a sensor from a third meant three apps, three accounts, and automations that stopped at the edge of each ecosystem.

Matter defines a shared vocabulary. A certified bulb says “I’m a bulb, I can turn on, turn off, and dim” in a way every platform understands without a custom integration.

How Matter works

It works like a shared language that sits on top of your home network. Certified devices are added once and can be controlled from several platforms at the same time.

The most important practical consequence is called multi-fabric: the same device can live in more than one ecosystem at once. In a home where one person uses an iPhone and another uses Android, nobody has to decide who’s right anymore.

The second is setup. Adding a certified device follows a standard procedure, usually a code you scan, instead of a different process for every brand.

What Matter changes if you own devices from different brands

First, automations no longer stop at the border. A sensor from one brand can turn on a light from another without middle steps or external bridging services.

Second, people in the same home don’t need the same phone anymore. In a couple with one iPhone and one Android, each person controls the home from their own.

The risk of getting locked in drops too. A device that speaks an open standard keeps working if you switch platforms, so a wrong choice made two years ago costs you much less.

Finally, the question to ask in the store changes: not “does it work with my system?” but “is it Matter certified?”

Matter, Thread and Zigbee: what’s the difference

They sit on three different layers and get mixed up all the time.

Matter is the language: it defines what a device can say and what it can be asked to do. It travels over three roads, Wi-Fi, Thread, and Ethernet, all of which stay inside your home network. That’s why local control keeps working even if your internet connection drops.

Thread is a low-power mesh radio network designed for battery-powered devices. To talk to the rest of the house it needs a border router, a role many speakers, displays, and hubs already play. Version 1.4, released by the Thread Group in September 2024, lets border routers share a single network instead of each creating a parallel one, one of the most common reasons devices drop off at random.

Zigbee is an older protocol, also from the Connectivity Standards Alliance, and still widely installed. It isn’t IP-based, so it needs its own hub and reaches Matter platforms through a bridge. Hubs like Philips Hue, Aqara M3, and IKEA Dirigera do exactly that. That’s why a home full of Zigbee devices doesn’t have to be thrown out.

How many devices support Matter today

The number changes every month. The only place it’s always up to date is the Connectivity Standards Alliance’s database of certified products, so any fixed figure you read elsewhere is almost certainly already stale.

What doesn’t go stale is the trajectory. Matter launched in October 2022. Version 1.2, in October 2023, opened the door to appliances. Version 1.5, ratified in late 2025, added cameras. Version 1.6, released on June 17, 2026, introduced NFC setup: you can pair a bulb before you even screw it in.

All four major home platforms support it. On the open-source side, Home Assistant was the first project to earn official Matter certification.

In the store, check the box: it should carry the Matter logo, not the words “Matter ready.” The latter means the manufacturer is working on it. Sometimes that’s all it means.

What Matter doesn’t fix

Matter solves interoperability and stops there.

It doesn’t cover every device category. If a product does something the shared vocabulary doesn’t include, that feature stays reachable only through the manufacturer’s app.

It doesn’t make the platforms equal. Two ecosystems can support the same device and offer very different automation logic: the standard guarantees they understand each other, not that they can do the same things.

Above all, it doesn’t improve the triggers you already have. If your leaving-home automations fire late because they depend on your phone’s location, they’ll keep firing late with Matter. The standard carries messages better, but it doesn’t change the moment they’re created. We wrote about this in why leaving-home automations fire late.

Do you need Matter to automate leaving home

Matter is how the pieces connect, but on its own it doesn’t solve the moment you leave.

The bottleneck isn’t communication between devices. What’s missing is a reliable event that says “this person is leaving now.” The available triggers measure locations, presence, or doors that are already open, so they arrive late or without knowing who’s leaving. We compared the alternatives in physical triggers for your smart home.

Dory, the Matter-compatible smart key tray, creates that event. When you pick up your keys, Dory knows you’re leaving and knows who you are, then passes that on to the home you already have and lets your automations on Alexa, Google Home, Apple Home, or Home Assistant take it from there. We cover the category in the guide to smart key trays.