Matter
Last updated: January 2, 2026
Matter is the smart home industry's attempt to finally get everyone to play nice together. It's an open connectivity standard that lets devices from different brands (Apple, Google, Amazon, Samsung, you name it) actually work with each other without the usual compatibility headaches.
Get weekly smart home insights delivered to your inbox.
Remember when every smart home device needed its own app, its own hub, and preferably a degree in computer science to set up? Matter is the industry's collective "we can do better" moment. Launched in late 2022 by the Connectivity Standards Alliance (the folks behind Zigbee), Matter is an open-source, royalty-free standard that promises a simple truth: if it has the Matter logo, it works with your system. Period.
Here's the genuinely exciting part: Matter runs over your existing home network using Thread, Wi-Fi, or Ethernet - no proprietary hub required. It works locally, so your lights don't throw a tantrum when your internet hiccups. The big players (Apple HomeKit, Google Home, Amazon Alexa, Samsung SmartThings) have all committed to supporting it - and so has Home Assistant, which became the first open-source project to receive official Matter certification in early 2025. That's significant: it means you're not locked into big tech ecosystems to enjoy Matter's benefits.
The standard keeps evolving too. Matter 1.5 (November 2025) finally added the long-awaited camera support - including video doorbells, floodlight cameras, and intercoms - plus garage doors, window coverings, soil sensors, and smarter energy management. With Samsung SmartThings already supporting Matter cameras and manufacturers like Aqara bringing Matter-compatible cameras in early 2026, the ecosystem is maturing fast. Is it perfect yet? No. But for the first time, buying a smart home device doesn't require checking seventeen compatibility charts.
Related Terms
Amazon Alexa
Amazon Alexa is the smart home platform that won by showing up everywhere first. With over half the smart speaker market and compatibility with practically everything, it's the path of least resistance - affordable hardware, thousands of skills, and the voice assistant your less-techy relatives probably already have.
Apple HomeKit
Apple HomeKit is the smart home platform for people who chose the Apple ecosystem and want that same "it just works" philosophy applied to their home. Privacy-first by design, everything encrypted end-to-end, and Siri ties it all together - but you'll need Apple hardware and accept a smaller device selection.
Google Home
Google Home is the smart home platform for people who live in Google's world. The voice assistant is genuinely the smartest of the big three - it understands context, handles follow-up questions, and knows your calendar. The trade-off? Google's business model means your data fuels the machine.
Home Assistant
Home Assistant is the fast-moving heart of the open-source smart home movement. With 2 million active installations and 21,000+ contributors, it's become the de facto standard for local-first home automation - the platform that made "your data stays home" a mainstream expectation.
Thread
Thread is a low-power mesh networking protocol that lets smart home devices talk to each other without a central hub. Think of it as the invisible web that Matter devices use to communicate - each device strengthens the network, and if one goes down, the others pick up the slack.
Zigbee
Zigbee is the veteran mesh networking protocol that's been quietly running smart homes for over a decade. It connects low-power devices like sensors, bulbs, and switches through a self-healing mesh network - and unlike Wi-Fi gadgets, your Zigbee motion sensor won't need new batteries every month.