Can someone clarify about Matter/Homekit

[Rastie (Ryan)]

Hi guys - Reddit says Smart things v3 supports matter now - does that mean it integrates well with homekit? I am trying to figure out the home I just moved into and what ecosystems to get back into.

Thank

[Paul_Oliver (PCO)]

SmartThings has worked with Matter devices for quite a while.

But unfortunately it is not a Matter Bridge, so it doesn’t share non-matter (ZigBee, Z-Wave) devices with other systems via Matter.

Matter devices attached SmartThings can be shared with other systems.

[Andrew_Bartlett]

I believe you can integrate SmartThings with Homekit using Homebridge. Not tried myself though.

Homebridge after groovy

There is an active discussion of how to bring ST into HomeKit once the Groovy cloud is gone in the following thread, but it’s over 300 messages down from the start of thread. I’m starting this new topic so the discussion is easier to find. There are a couple of different possibilities detailed there. For example, one uses MQTT as an intermediary, another uses Home Assistant. A third is a regular Homebridge plugin and a fourth by the same author is a plug-in specifically for HOOBS. (Since Samsung has said officially that ST hubs will NOT be “Matter bridges,” Matter isn’t going to help with this use case. So it’s back to Homebridge we go.) All solutions, including those under discussion in the following thread, require a separate dedicated server and some technical skill. The following st…

Homebridge

[JDRoberts]

The various SmartThings hubs serve as “matter controllers“ but not “matter bridges.“

That means they support matter one way in, you can use devices which are matter certified and add them to your SmartThings account and use them with the SmartThings app.

But you cannot add a SmartThings hub to any other matter compliant platform using matter. They do not support matter going out.

That’s a decision that every manufacturer gets to make for themselves.

For example, the Philips Hue Bridge supports matter one way out, but not matter in.

Samsung has indicated they do not plan to make SmartThings hubs into matter bridges at this time. They might reconsider in the future.

But for now, you cannot use matter to bring a SmartThings hub or the devices connected to it which are not individually matter certifiedinto Apple home.

(As @Paul_Oliver said, if a device is individually certified for matter, like, say, the tapo Matter smart plug, then you could add it to both SmartThings and Apple home, and it would work with both at the same time. But that’s not because of anything that SmartThings is doing.)

As others have mentioned, there are some other ways to create a integration between SmartThings and Apple HomeKit using something called “Homebridge“ which has been around for a few years, I think people have already given you the links for that.