But it is a switch in Matter terminology, isn’t it? “Switch” is the cluster for momentary switches that support push, multiple taps, etc. Unless the Aqara Mini Switch is a dimmer there’s no lie there.
There are reviews now, the advertised control of Matter devices is… a gimmick. It does not control Matter devices, it just has four actions that map to four buttons in Apple Home and that’s all. You can’t even have different sets of actions, it’s only four, just like if it was a normal smart button.
Screenshot from Homekit News video
Correct, it shows up as 4 buttons in SmartThings (and Apple Home and Home Assistant). Although buttons 2-4 currently throw an error for me on the remote itself. The terminology they use is pretty terrible, but it’s definitely not a gimmick. It provides a way to do 4 different actions you want in your Matter Controller platform of choice.
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I agree: not a gimmick.
It’s a button controller with 4 buttons exposed to Matter. That’s useful for multiple use cases if you like physical button remotes, and it’s worth noting that you can use the same button for different actions on different matter platforms. So one physical button press could do a lot of different things.
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Are the IR blaster functions available to SmartThings? Maybe as SwitchBot scenes (which is how the mini SwitchBot hub IR blaster already works).
I’m guessing that IR devices are still bridged to Matter through the SwitchBot hub, yes? So that’s the same as the SwitchBot hub 2.
Since IR control has to be line of sight, I guess I’m just wondering if having the universal remote might give you one additional room where you could do IR control from SmartThings. But I know there’s always the worry with a handheld remote that it will have been left in a different physical location and not available to do the IR blasting, so I wouldn’t be surprised if that functionality is only intended for use from physical button presses on the remote itself
I mean, they advertise it as a universal remote that can control multiple third party Matter devices. And what you get? Just four actions that you can’t even change, even a $10 zigbee button has more actions available and you don’t even need to browse menus.
What’s the point of a universal remote for Matter if all the buttons in the remote like on, off, plus, minus, etc. are useless with Matter? That’s why I call it a gimmick, it’s a feature made mostly for advertisement purposes. And I’m sure everybody would think you could use the on to turn on a light and the + to make it brighter.
I agree that it’s not a “universal remote“ exposed to matter. Only the four scenes are.
That’s actually a similar design to the old logitech Harmony remote that worked with the now discontinued Harmony hub. There were four additional “Smart home” physical buttons on the device, and those were the only ones that could control home automation devices, instead of home entertainment devices.
We had two of these at our house and liked them given that we have some people who prefer voice control and some people who prefer physical buttons. But I agree that it was probably confusing to typical users. 
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This is definitely terribly worded by them. The way they describe it is that the remote is a Matter Controller, which it definitely isn’t. The better descriptions would have been “The Universal remote provides 4 buttons over Matter for controlling devices in your Matter ecosystem”
not sure what you mean by this? you can assign any action you want to the 4 buttons presses.
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Unfortunately not. The only place i’ve seen SwitchBot scenes exposed is Alexa. I believe scene support requires Matter 1.3? So maybe if they ever update their bridge to support Matter 1.3 it will happen
Correct, no change in the Matter Bridge functionality. Scenes to do things like turn on TV and change input of receiver also run off the SB bridge, not the remote. Which I think is how Harmony did it? So any remote you want to program needs to be setup on the Bridge first and then shared to the remote.
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I meant you can’t change the behaviour of the buttons from the remote as they suggest. The screenshots clearly show the option to select the device to control so the buttons will have a different action, for instance one button now controls a light and later it controls a blind.
The scene naming is also tricky, you would think with 1 you’re going to control the Smart Bulb, with 2 the Smart Blind, etc. But no, it’s just one predefined action for the bulb and one predefined action for the blind. That’s not the type of control of Matter devices you expect from “the first remote to support Matter”.
In fact, the text explicitly states that you can have a “completely seamless smart home experience” controlling both Switchbot and third party Matter devices and “use with Matter for a true all-in-one experience”. That’s just not true.
I see what you mean. Yeah, they aren’t clear on this. It works this way only for Switchbot devices. so if you’ve selected a SB Bulb you can turn on/off, adjust brightness, color, etc. If you select a SB curtain you can open and close,
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Yeah, it looks like there’s no matter controller within the SwitchBot ecosystem at this time, so they have to go out to Apple home to get one. Odd design.
the article, and switchbot’s own documentation, are not clear on how it works over Matter. The easiest way to think about it is the universal remote is a 4 button remote over Matter and your matter controller must support Matter buttons.
This is true. No Third party Matter devices are available in the switchbot app.
Not quite. No third party devices are brought into the Switcbot app, ever. SwitchBot exposes the universal remote as 4 buttons over their Matter bridge. So if you’re Matter controller supports that, you can base whatever actions you want on those button presses. I have those 4 buttons working with Apple Home, SmartThings and Home Assistant. I have mine setup this way:
Button 1: toggles our living room ceiling light
Button 2: toggles our living room lamps
Button 3: toggles our living room shelf lights
Button 4: runs our Movie scene in Apple Home
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Do you need Apple home to set it up? In smartthings, I see the Matter buttons, but I cannot access them in Switchbot. It only lets me set up with Google Home, which crashes.
SwitchBot Universal Remote review: Universal in name only
Finally the media is exposing the marketing gimmick. “Universal”, with “seamless smart home experience” using Matter devices, “the first remote to support Matter” so you can control third party devices and… turns out the control of third party devices is so minimal and insignificant that even a regular smart button can control more things.
As discussed previously, it’s basically a Switchbot remote with an independent bridged Matter button that has no integration whatsoever with all the features of the remote. So, for people with Switchbot devices it’s probably great, for people expecting a universal remote for Matter it’s going to be quite deceiving, just get a smart button for that, it’s cheaper and you won’t need a bridge.
There’s still hope they update the firmware eventually and make the remote actually compatible with Matter as it is supposed to be instead of just four isolated buttons.
That’s all the Matter compatibility of the universal remote, four small buttons with single press action. Then you create routines to do whatever you want.
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Honestly, I’m fine with that. I would preferably like more buttons, but I have two scenes and a device I’d like to turn on and off.
i’m confused. If you see the universal remote buttons in SmartThings it sounds like its already setup?
On the remote it does not pop up to click. Yet smartthings see them. On the remote itself it just shows the tv i linked. Nothing else. In the setting it say i can set up but leads me to google home and nothing else.
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Same issue for me. Switchbot hub connected to smartthings. The remote shows up as a button in smartthings(one button, not 4 for me). I can configure the button in smartthings. I currently have it set to close my smart blinds. I can’t seem to turn on the option for matter buttons on the remote itself. When I trying to set it up in the switchbot app it kicks me out to Google Home app which does nothing. The option to turn on matter buttons on the remote never shows up in the switchbot app. If anyone has actually got this working with smartthings please let me know how you did it.
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