What Can Matter Do for the Philips Hue Smart Home System? Warning: Connecting all platforms through a unified bridge in the Amazon Alexa app

The Philips Hue smart lighting system offers a wide range of excellent smart bulbs, from color-changing and tunable white bulbs in every shape and size to LED light strips, outdoor lanterns, and holiday lights. With Matter, a new smart home standard, it is easier for your smart home devices to communicate with each other in your home.

But Hue was already reliable and easy to use. It already works locally, and it’s compatible with every platform. Assuming Matter works as intended, what does Matter do for Hue?

Warning: I advise caution here. In my experience, adding the bridge to other platforms through Matter didn’t work or caused stability issues, especially if you have lots of devices. If you run into these problems, it’s relatively simple to disconnect from Matter. Eliminate the bridge from the first platform you pair it to, and you will be able to remove it and all associated devices from all the platforms. It will stay on the other platforms if you just remove it from that app.

Note: Any motion sensors you have will come over to Alexa but as four separate devices: the sensor itself, then three separate sensors with default names for temperature, light level, and motion. Put these all in the same group. Dimming switches, buttons, and other remotes are not supported by Amazon yet.

Apple Home as a Foundation for Matter: Connecting Multiple Hue Bridges to Multiple Platforms and Using Apple’s Adaptive Lighting Function

I attempt to add them to Home. The bulbs were named Bulb at first. Two days later, the correct names appeared, but at no point have they been online or controllable through Google Home.

HomeKit and Matter are compatible and can be used together to use Apple’s adaptive lighting feature. You can not remove all the duplicate lights in your Apple Home app. If you want to keep your connections local, this might be worth using Apple Home as your foundation for Matter and pair devices to other Matter platforms from it.

Voice commands are not being responded to by my lights. They frequently disconnect from my smart home platforms. I can’t add any new bulbs to Apple Home. I’ve had to delete and re-add every single bulb and sensor six times while troubleshooting these issues. And I can’t get them to work on two platforms at the same time, let alone three or four.

After three months of trying, I was able to get the bridge into two platforms at once, but only for a few hours, until it would not work in the other. I never got it into three platforms at once and gave up on trying a fourth or fifth for my sanity. (Five is the maximum number of platforms Matter will allow you to connect to.)

Previously, only Apple HomeKit allowed for multiple bridges; if you used other platforms, you were limited to the maximum amount allowed on one bridge. With Matter, you can connect multiple bridges to platforms such as Amazon Alexa and Google Home.

With Matter, those third-party bulbs are now exposed to the platforms you pair to, including Apple Home. This benefit only applies to existing setup, because Matter gives you more options for cheaper third-party bulbs that will work with every platform.

When you upgrade you lose Apple’s adaptive lighting function. The light can be adjusted based on when the sun goes down, as well as other times of the day. The only lights that will work are the ones from Matter and the hue bulbs from Apple.

Source: I upgraded my Hue Bridge to Matter, so you don’t have to

Reconnected bridge in the cloud using the alexa skill: A journey through the cloud with the alpha kinematics and the Holomorphic Radiation Radiation

I gave up on this process and reconnected the bridge through the cloud using the alexa skill, which has been working perfectly ever since.