What is Matter?
Matter is a smart home standard, designed to free your smart home. Have you ever been confused into a state of despair in your local Home Depot? Or felt trapped into an ecosystem based on a previous purchase? Matter is looking to fix this, and product manufacturers like us are getting onboard. Matter will ensure all products sporting the Matter logo will work with each other and empower you, the smart homeowner.
This is great for competition and will drive innovation across the smart home industry, as you will be able to choose the products you want and not feel locked into a specific brand or technology.
It is also great for a company like us, who for years have built complex integrations with various third parties. Now with Matter, we can build a feature once and make it available to all Matter devices. That means more time making the best colored lights in the world and less time troubleshooting bugs.
So no more tearing your hair out in the smart home aisle and messaging your buddy Jake who works in “tech” to check if this will work. Just look for the Matter logo on the packaging and you’re all set to get your lights strobing when your Saturday playlist hits.
When will I be able to buy LIFX devices that support Matter out of the box?
LIFX will be launching a new range of devices that will support Matter in early 2024. All products will be labelled with Matter badging to indicate the product is certified and has shipped with Matter support.
Why is LIFX launching new products without Matter support?
LIFX has been working on launching a range of new products with the aim of supporting Matter out of the box, however, given the fluid nature of manufacturing and software development, we can not always guarantee timelines are aligned. The good news is, we have designed the new LIFX products with Matter ready hardware and will update them via a firmware update when Matter certification and compliance processes are complete.
Will existing LIFX devices be updated to support Matter? Update (June 20th 2024)
We are working to provide Matter firmware updates to all existing LIFX devices that are capable of supporting it. Matter is more resource intensive, so we haven't been able to get this working on all device types. We are planning to provide updates to the following devices over the next few months:
- LIFX Beam (Generation 3 controllers only*)
- LIFX Lightstrip (Generation 3 controllers only*)
- LIFX Switches **
- LIFX Neon Indoor
- LIFX String
Due to the performance requirements and the heating considerations for LIFX Bulbs, we aren't going to be able to provide Matter updates for any of the existing LIFX bulb products. Across this year, we will be updating all of our existing range of products to a new more efficient chip that will be Matter capable. For the products that won't be getting an update, they will continue to be supported within the LIFX ecosystem and 3rd party ecosystems.
* To check if your Beam or Lightstrip has a Generation 3 controller, you can check the firmware version in the LIFX app. All Generation 3 controllers have a firmware starting with v3.
** To check if your Switch has a Generation 3 controller, you can check the firmware version in the LIFX app. All Generation 3 controllers have a firmware starting with v3. Please note: There is a small batch of Smart Switches sold in Australia & New Zealand that will not support the update. If your switches are part of this batch, you will not see an update option in the app for those Switches.