What Is Matter? We Explain the Smart Home Standard (2025)

Perfect The house expects smoothly your needs and immediately responds to orders. You should not open a specific application for each device or remember the fine audio collection and sound assistant that starts your latest podcast loop on the nearest amplifier. Competitive smart home standards make your devices be opened unnecessarily. He is not only … well, smart.

Technology giants try to stretch criteria by presenting their vocal aides as a dominant layer on top, but Alexa cannot speak to Google Assistant or Siri or control Google or Apple devices, and vice versa. (And yet, no single ecosystem has created all the best devices.) But these inter -operating problems may soon be treated. It is previously called Project Chip (Home Home Over IP), with an open source operating standard known as the MATTER in 2022. With some of the largest technology names, such as Amazon, Apple and Google, on board, smooth integration may be on hand.

Updated in May 2025: We added the issue 1.4 and 1.4.1 specifications to enhance multiple management, energy management, easier preparation, and the updated general progress of the standard.

What is the issue?

MATTER offers different environmental devices and systems to play well. Device manufacturers should comply with the material standard to ensure that their devices are compatible with home services and smart voice such as Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Google and others. For people who build a smart house, the theoretical MATTER allows you to purchase any device and use the audio assistant or the preferred preferred system. (Yes, you can use different audio auxiliary to speak to the same product.)

For example, you can buy a smart bulb backed by an issue and prepare it with Apple HomeKit, Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa- without worrying about compatibility. Currently, some devices already support multiple platforms (such as Alexa or Google Assistant), but MATTER will expand this basic system support and make the preparation of your new devices faster and easier.

The first protocol works on the Wi-Fi network layers and the strands network and uses the Bluetooth low energy to prepare the device. Although it supports many platforms, you should choose the auxiliary and audio applications you want to use – there is no applicant or central assistant. Since the material works on your local network, you can expect your smart home appliances to be more responsive to you, and you should continue to work even when the Internet decreases.

What makes it different?

The coalition of communication standards (or CSA, previously Zigbee alliance) maintains the material of the material. What distinguishes it is the breadth of its membership (more than 550 technical companies), the desire to adopt and integrate different technologies, and the fact that it is an open source project. Interested companies can use the software development group (SDK) free of kings to integrate their devices into the substance of the material. This is much simpler than devoted to devices individually with each smart home platform.

The growth of the Zigbee alliance gives the material a constant basis. Creating the main smart home platforms (Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit, Google Home and Samsung SmartTHings) to the same table is an achievement. It is optimistic imagining a smooth dependence of the material in all fields, but it has a rush of enthusiasm with many smart home brands that jump on board, including August, Schlage, and Yale in smart locks; Belkin, CYNC, GE Lighting, Sengled, Manify (Philips Hue), and nanoleaf in smart lighting; And others like ARLO, Comcast, EVE, TP-Link and LG.

When did the article arrive?

The matter was in business for years. The first version of the Project Chip was due in the late 2020, but was delayed until the following year, and it was renamed as an issue, then it was promoted for a summer version. After another delay, the specifications program and the issuance of certificates 1.0 were opened in 2022. SDK, tools, and testing cases were provided, and eight approved test laboratories were opened to issue the product certificate.

The first wave of material -backed smart household items has been sold in the fall of 2022, and we have seen a steady calm since then. The first update of the specifications, Article 1.1, in May 2023 reached a large extent of error repairs. In October 2023, Matter 1.2 announced support for nine new types of devices, including refrigerators, robot voids, and air purification, as well as improvements to the current categories.

Issue specifications were published 1.3 in May 2024, adding energy management, EV shipping and water management as well as support for new devices, including ovens, cooktops, and washing dryers. You have also brought improvements to Matter Casting, so, in addition to the ability to receive from your phone to TV, other smart devices, such as your robot vacuum, send messages to your TV to warn you if they are stuck, for example.