Philips makes some of our favorite smart home accessories. Unlike many other companies, Philips regularly updates its Hue-branded products with new features and enhancements. The company also backs Matter, the open-source standard that aims to bring all your smart home devices under one umbrella. Right after Matter’s official launch in November 2022, Philips promised to roll out an update to the Hue Bridge in Q1 2023 to add support for the smart home standard. With only a few days left before the deadline, the company is now backtracking on its promise.
HueBlog reached out to Philips about Matter support for the Hue Bridge. The company confirmed that while the update is coming, it will take a bit longer than anticipated. Worse, there’s no clear timeframe for the firmware’s release.
Below is Philips’ statement in full:
For the launch of Matter, we are working together with many partners in the smart home industry. With Philips Hue, we always focus on convincing quality to meet our customers’ expectations. Therefore, we will take a little more time than originally planned for the Philips Hue Bridge software update before making it available to all consumers. We will inform you as soon as we have a concrete date for the release of the Matter software update.
Unless Philips Hue Bridge gains Matter compatibility, other Hue branded accessories like lights and switches will also not work with the smart home standard. On the bright side, Philips has only delayed the rollout of the smart home standard for its devices, unlike Belkin, which has given up on Matter for the time being.
Besides enabling interoperability with other smart home devices, Matter support promises other usability enhancements for Philips Hue Bridge users. This includes faster performance while executing commands and the ability to connect multiple Hue Bridges to Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa. Apparently, the Hue lights will also turn on/off in a synchronized manner when used with Siri after gaining Matter support.
For now though, all you can do is hope that the promised Matter support arrives sooner than later.
