Google Pushes its Matter Update Out to Google Home, Nest, and Android Smart Home Products

Google has announced general availability of its Matter rollout, pushing it to a range of recent Google Home, Nest, and Android devices in order to make smart home integration easier.

"As a member of the Connectivity Standards Alliance, the organization that develops Matter, we've worked alongside 300 companies for nearly three years to help make it easier to connect smart home devices across hundreds of brands," Google's Karen Yao explains of the announcement. "With Matter, everything from smart lighting, thermostats, window shades, and door locks will work better together with less time and effort on your part."

Known at its launch in 2019 as Project Connected Home over IP, Matter is a royalty-free standard for smart home intercommunication created by the Connectivity Standards Alliance — itself put together by founders Amazon, Apple, Samsung, the at-the-time ZigBee Alliance, and of course Google. The idea: to reduce fragmentation in the smart home market by allowing products from multiple manufacturers to communicate with each other.

Unlike hubless Wi-Fi-based alternatives, Matter requires a compatible hub to act as a bridge between the Matter network and the wider internet. Google, naturally, is pushing its own products here — having rolled out updates for the Google Home speaker family, Google Home Mini, Nest Mini, Nest Audio, first and second generation Nest Hubs, Nest Hub Max, and the new Nest Wifi Pro — though the promise of Matter is, of course, that you could use anyone's Matter-compatible hub. Those with a Nest Wifi Pro, Nest Hub Max, or second-generation Nest Hub, meanwhile, will also receive Thread border support in the update — providing compatibility with Thread devices alongside Matter ones.

Google has also pushed an update for Matter support to Android, offering "Fast Pair" compatibility. "Fast Pair makes it simple to quickly connect Matter-enabled devices to your home network, Google Home, and other smart home apps, as quickly as you can pair a set of headphones," Yao claims. "And once set up, it'll be easy to connect your Matter devices with the other apps and ecosystems you choose."

Google has confirmed it is working on bringing Matter to more of its devices in the near future, along with a version of the Google Home app compatible with Apple's iOS — and that it's working in partnership with Samsung to use Matter's built-in "Multi-Admin" feature to provide a smoother experience for managing devices in both Google Home and Samsung SmartThings, due to arrive as an update some time in 2023.

More information is available on the Google blog.