Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google Home could soon let you link Matter-enabled devices that have already been set up on a different smart home platform.
- This will be helpful if you are migrating platforms, as it would save you from a reset-setup cycle across your smart home products to integrate them with Google Home.
- It will also help use smart home devices with multiple controller apps without following a strict setup order.
Google has refocused on the smart home with a refreshed Google Home app released in recent years. The Google Home app is the home to all your smart home devices that are compatible with the Google ecosystem. The Google Home app could soon allow you to link Matter devices that you have already set up elsewhere.
An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
The Google Home app lets you set up and control your Google and Nest-branded smart home devices, Google Home-compatible devices (under the “Works with Google Home” branding), and even Matter-enabled devices.
Matter is the network protocol that lets smart home products work across major platforms like Google Home, Amazon Alexa, Samsung SmartThings, and Apple HomeKit. If you see a Matter logo on the product box, you can stop worrying about whether the smart home device you are about to purchase is compatible with Google Home because it will be.
Since Matter focuses on interoperability, you will run into scenarios where a smart home product has been set up on a different platform, but then needs to be used on or migrated to Google Home, say if you are switching from iOS to Android. If you decide to migrate across platforms, you will have to go around resetting all of these Matter devices and setting them up again on Google Home, as the app does not allow you to link Matter devices that have already been set up.
We’ve spotted new strings in the Google Home app v3.23.1.3 that suggest that Google wants to reduce this trouble by letting you link already-setup Matter-enabled devices to Google Home. We managed to activate the setup option that enables you to link the already-set-up smart home device.
After their first setup, Matter devices usually let you create a second QR code to link to a second controller app without going through a reset-setup cycle. This new entry in Google Home will likely work with this second QR code, letting you add the smart home device that was set up on a different platform without troubling you with a reset-setup cycle. This will also be helpful for combo integration, letting you use Matter-enabled devices with Google Home and a second controller app without following a specific order of setup.
The feature is not currently live. Given its utility for smart home enthusiasts, we hope Google rolls it out soon for all Google Home users.
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