FabianActually, it was supposed to be ready in spring, in the end we had to be patient a bit longer. But now it is here: Matter support for Philips Hue. As of now, it can be activated in the settings of the Hue app – but there are some details to keep in mind.
The Matter integration of Philips Hue is done via the Hue Bridge. In my opinion, this is the most elegant solution there can be for such a full-blown system, because after all, all lamps, switches and sensors are made compatible with Matter and no new hardware is required.
All you need is a Matter Border Router
All you need is a Matter control centre, the heart of the system. Here you have very individual options, for example one of the following devices:
- Apple TV 4K or Apple TV HD (4th generation)
- Apple HomePod or HomePod mini
- Samsung SmartThings Hub
- almost all Echo speakers from Amazon
- Google Home or Home Mini
- Nest Hub, Nest mini, Nest Audio
How to activate the Matter integration
In the settings of the Hue app, you will now find an item called “Smart Home”, previously it was called Voice Control. There you can access the Matter setup via the plus symbol and other apps. You will receive a pairing code that you can then enter in the app of your control centre, for example the Alexa app or the Home app from Apple.
Connecting Philips Hue with other systems via Matter
But how exactly does it work now? To be able to use Matter, you definitely have to be connected to a Philips Hue account. After that, you receive a pairing code, which you can then use to continue on the other platforms. I would like to show you exactly how using Amazon Alexa as an example.
- Open the Alexa app and tap on the plus icon in the device tab to add a new device.
- select Matter under “other”
- instead of scanning the QR code, tap on “try number code instead” and add the pairing code.
The subsequent search will find the Hue Bridge and add the devices connected to it to Alexa. This process can be repeated with other bridges and works very similarly on platforms such as Apple Home or Google Assistant.
Why actually use Matter?
If your system runs smoothly and you are satisfied with the existing integration into Smart Home systems such as Apple Home, then in my opinion there is currently no reason to switch to Matter. Please also bear in mind that the control of Hue lamps via Matter is only possible in a limited way, similar to Alexa or HomeKit so far. Special functions, such as gradient light bulbs, are not supported. However, the following points will be interesting:
- Integration of third-party light bulbs into HomeKit.
- Coupling of several Hue Bridges with Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant.
These two points were not possible until now. You are welcome to describe in the comments how the Matter setup worked for you and for what purposes you use it.
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I cannot seem to connect with Google Home. It gets up to device is connected and after specifying the location, I get a “something has gone wrong” message. Has anyone managed to connect to Google Home? As an aside, I have two bridges – each registered with separate accounts. Tried keeping only one powered up but that didn’t help. No issues connecting just one via the Hue account and “works with Google”.
The other thing I have noted is that after the “something has gone wrong” message, according to the Hue app, the bridge is connected to Google Assistant, but nothing appears in Google Home and Google Assistant cannot control the lights connected to that hub. Further attempts to connect with Google Home results in the device not being found until the link to Google Assistant is unlinked, then it is back to the “something has gone wrong” message.
I have also problems. Once I could find the hue bridge in Google Home but now it cannot find it anymore. They seem to have changed something on the Philips side
Was very excited to see that the matter update was finally available and immediately went to the app to update my hue system. The first step to add hue lights to HomeKit via matter was to “UNLINK YOUR HUE BRIDGE FROM HomeKit TO BEGIN” Clearly I should have stopped immediately so I could wait a week or two to let some other suckers suffer the inevitable kinks. But as a Philips customer for 7 years I have come to just accept that it would fail and that there would be no support and of course “MATTER IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE”. Seems to be available and working flawlessly with Nanoleaf and Eve devices—and I never did have to reset every single device with either of those transfers to matter
Can someone explain how it works with “multiple bridges” ?
I assume on the philips side you can still only associate one bridge with your hue account?
But it means with Alexa you could control the other with voice commands & create routines in Alexa e.g
Switch from hub 1 triggers lights from hub 2?
The only thing you would then miss would be remote connecting to the 2 hub through the philips app but this could be bypassed using Alexa?
You need to set up both bridges like usual in due Hue-App and connect both of them via Matter to Alexa. It’s the same way HomeKit worked before. You don’t need the Alexa skill anymore, which was limited to one account and one bridge.
I succeeded in setting up hue bridge –> matter –> alexa app, and it found all my bulbs and I had to re-organize them (rooms, groups etc…) …. ON/OFF commands work fine over alexa, but I cannot find a solution to trigger certain scenes over Alexa.
As, before setting-up, I erased all bulbs AND scenes in Alexa App, all the bulbs were found again over matter, bot NOT the scenes. Where’s my problem located? Should Alexa learn/import the scenes from HUE bridge, or should HUE bridge deliver the stored scenes as Alexa asks for it?
For Google home users:
1. Unlink all Hue from Google Assistant. Not Home.
2. Follow the guide in the pictures above.
3. Now that you have Matter access on your single or multiple bridges it’s time to re-link your Hue account(s). Do this in Google Assistant.
4. You should be able to see all lights now. If there are lights that appear offline you need to add them once again to your home and room.
5. You might need to power off your bridges and disconnect Ethernet for changes to take place.
I’m now able to do voice commands for all my lights spread over two bridges.
I too had error messages, but continue to try for a couple of times and for me at least it finally came through.
I get the “offline bulbs” error, what do you mean by “add them once again to your home”. This is the 2nd time I am removing the matter integration and reading it.
When I try to unlink the Philips Hue I get a message “Could not reach Philips Hue. Try again later.” This is happening after the pain I had after trying to link Matter without unlinking the “old standard” connection.
Now I don’t have any devices, cleared lots of connections in both Google and Hue but the service is still there. Tried to reconnect the link too, didn’t work.
Almost like a ghost… Any ideas?
Can I ask how you managed to connect both your bridges via Matter? I have two bridges too, but can only connect one or the other. As far as I can tell, Google Home / Assistant only allows linking of one Hue account. So, as each bridge requires its own Hue account, it is not possible via linked accounts? Matter was supposed to circumvent this.
@Lana
In Google Home, press and hold one offline light. Now you should be prompted to select a home and room to place that light in.
When all done you should see it as a light thats ONline.
@Lord Vader
After you have successfully linked one Hue-account to Google, you need too log out from meet Hue. The next time you press link Hue you will come to that login again but now you can choose the other Hue account. 👍
@ Joao
Are you sure that you´re doing this in Google Assistant, and not Google Home?
@Lurifuxx
Thank you but perhaps I must be doing something silly. I can successfully link one Hue account to Google Assistant. After I log out of that account in meethue, and try to link my second Hue account, the options are either Reconnect account or Unlink account. Unlink account of course completely unlinks my already linked Hue account. If I were to use Reconnect account and now link my second Hue account, all the rooms from the first account remain, but all the lights in those rooms disappear and get replaced with lights from the second account. Moving those lights to the rooms that they should be in does not bring back the lights from the first account that are supposed to be in that room. I have tried different order, restarting, different phones/tablets etc all to no avail. I simply cannot get Google Assistant or Google Home to connect to more than one Hue account at a time.
@ Lord Vader.
Have you successfully coupled both bridges with Matter before trying to add the second Hue account?
@Lurifuxx
Yes, I have. Matter is definitely running on both bridges (at least on checking via account.meethue.com -> My Philips Hue System -> My Homes -> All applications).
Same result regardless of whether through Google Assistant App, Google Home or Hue app -> Smart Integrations -> Smart home -> Google Assistant.
When the second bridge is linked, lights from the second bridge overwrite the lights from the first bridge and get put into the rooms from the first bridge. From what I can tell, it is not possible to link more than one Hue account with Google. Apparently, with Alexa, Matter support for Hue bypasses the Alexa skill which also only allows one Hue account. Perhaps there is a Google update that has not rolled to everyone yet?
@ Lord Vader.
Maybe. I’m sorry, but I’m out of ideas. Maybe someone else here can help you.
I myself have found out that scenes work great through one bridge, but not the other for some reason? To clarify, it works as a charm over all, but not with voice commands.
Worked flawlessly here in Google Home, not a single issue unlinking hue and connecting via matter again.
I’m getting this error on an iPhone, anyone else?
Matter is unavailable at this time. Please try again later.
Trying on an iPhone here, I got “the unavailable, try again later” error a few times, then I unplugged the bridge for 1 minute as well as the nest speaker, then tried again. Now the setup was successful, however, now all of my luminaires show “offline” and “unassigned”, none of my rooms or even the light names show up in Google Home, all of them are called “bulb”.
Additionally, if I tap on a single luminaire it tells me that I need a Hub to control this device, during the setup this was also brought up and it mentions that the Google Nest Mini (which I use) is a hub, therefore I have a working and configured Google hub, however when trying to link it with hue, it does not recognize it.
Hugely disappointed- I too am just getting the “matter unavailable” error on iPhone, after I have been prompted to unlink everything. So now I have no control over any of my hue accessories in the home app, and all my related automatons are gone. How philips screw this up after taking so long to roll out matter support is beyond me.
Why on earth is it “the most elegant solution”? What on earth is elegant about making consumers need to buy a hub and the lights not being able to act as matter repeaters to the rest of you smart home? I’ll give you a hint, nothing, nothing is elegant about it…
making devices (e.g. light bulbs) compatible with the latest “technologies” (e.g. matter) perhaps 10 years old, perhaps not for everyone is a plus… the hue hub is certainly “obsolete” today, but beyond the right criticisms that can be made, i think the effort to make devices “updated” that would have to be replaced with certainly higher costs with other commercial logics is appreciable. i would sign if hue managed to “update” its hub and thus allow me to continue using “old” light bulbs and accessories…
I tried linking my second hue hub (it doesn’t have a philips hue account) via matter to Alexa following the instruction given.
However, I am unable to generate a matter code from the hue app without “signing in to your hue account” which I don’t have for the second hub.
Do I need to create separate hue accounts for each hub to be able to connect with Alexa?
I thought the whole selling point of matter was that it worked locally without cloud/internet access?
I have still not had success connecting Philips Hue to Google Assistant/Home via add devices. As an alternative, I can only link one Philips Hue account (and therefore only one bridge) at a time. Perhaps with accounts made compulsory and the idea that more than one bridge per account will be supported, I can finally have Google Assistant controlling all my lights. I would not hold my breath though. Anyway, I believe there is a workaround by having another google account and “inviting” that account to the home will allow more than one bridge. I shall have to try that.
This is the response I have had from Philips following my query about Matter support / Google Home and more than one bridge…
In regards to your query, despite Matter been implemented, the Hue bridge can only control one voice assistance as well as the Google assistance.
Google assistant can only interact with one bridge, and there are currently no other options for integrating this feature into Google assistant.
Good morning,
Since I switched to Matter, I have continuous problems with Homekit.
Whenever I add a new accessory, the hub no longer responds on homekit, forcing me to remove and pair it.
This is the third time I am forced to reset, these days I had to deploy 2 remotes and a light bulb.
Is there any way to go back by removing matter compatibility?
Yes, you can undo the Matter coupling.
For those that had an issue adding Hue to Google Home using Matter, I found I have to remove all user accounts from Google Home, apart from my own. Both my bridges were added successfully after that.. Hope this helps someone.
I have a question. Now that Hue supports Matter, is it possible to do away with the Hue Bridge and use a HomePod mini only (for example) since I think it already has zigbee radio?
I really dislike having all these extra bridges and would love to do away with.
My control centre is an Apple TV 4K (without thread) and I have a HomePod mini as a border router. I have a hue bridge and a lot of Hue lights. I also have an Eve Door and Window sensor which is far away from the homepod mini.
Am I right in thinking that this Eve sensor will never be able to connect to the dense thread mesh network created my the Hue light bulbs? In other words: the addition of matter to the Hue bridge does not help me here?
(A couple of alternative solutions: add another homepod mini / new appleTV closer to the sensor, or add more Eve matter sensors throughout the house, or other matter devices that I can add directly to Homekit).
The Hue Bridge is connected via Matter over WiFi. The bulbs are not connected to Matter by their own.
Other sensors will not help you, because they are endpoints which to not forward signals. You need Matter Thread-Devices with a plug, connected to the power outlet. So for example an Eve Energy Plug.