What’s the Matter?

Matter was designed to solve a very annoying and confusing smart home problem; different firms’ smart home systems often don’t talk to one another, and it can be hard to find out what’s compatible with your kit. Matter is designed to solve that by providing a shared language for smart home devices, and it’s supported by Apple, Samsung, IKEA, Amazon, Google and many more.

Apple’s support for Matter needs you to have two things; Matter-compatible devices that use a networking protocol called Thread to communicate with your home network, and a Thread-compatible Apple device to act as a hub. At the moment, that means one of three devices – the 128GB Apple TV 4K (the 64GB version isn’t compatible), the second-generation HomePod, or the HomePod mini. That hub then enables you to use the Home app and Siri on your various devices to communicate with and control Matter smart home kit.