Google Home hubs get a big upgrade. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge
One of the key changes Matter is bringing to the smart home is a standardized way to enable local control of smart devices. This means your light bulb doesn’t have to talk to the cloud when you ask your voice assistant to turn it off. While some smart home ecosystems already offer local control, Matter should make implementing it easier for every smart home platform.
This week, Google announced it has added full local control of Matter devices to its Google Home Hubs by integrating Home Runtime. Now, Google Nest hubs and speakers, Chromecasts, Google TV devices on Android 14, and some LG TVs can connect to and control Matter devices locally.
“This means when a user who has a hub for Google Home device (at home) is viewing or controlling their Matter devices (at home), they can do so with higher reliability, privacy, and lower latency,” Jeannie Zhang, product manager for Google Home, told The Verge.
This is a significant change for the platform, which has historically relied on cloud connectivity for device control. Now, if the internet is down and you ask Google Assistant to turn on the lights, it should actually be able to follow through.
Google also shared details on its recent efforts to help developers make more products that work with Matter. These include working with the CSA to make certifying Matter devices easier and partnering with MediaTek to build a new chip that includes Wi-Fi, Bluetooth LE, and Thread. This should make it “easier and more affordable for device OEMs to build Thread into all their new products,” Google Home senior engineering director Matt Van Der Staay writes.
Finally, Google is opening its Home APIs to all developers. This allows developers to integrate Google Home devices and automations into their own apps, allowing them to focus their resources on building devices rather than integrations.
Google announced the Home APIs at I/O, but they weren’t available to all developers. The program had been in an early access phase with companies such as Eve, Nanoleaf, LG, ADT, Cync, Yale, and Aqara. Now, any company can access the Android version of the Home APIs in public developer beta, with the iOS version coming soon. Google says the Home APIs consist of:
Device and Structure APIs: With one single integration, get access to over 600M devices already connected to Google Home and a single unified interface to manage and control both cloud-connected and Matter devices across Google Home, enabling local control, broad device reach, and support for Matter custom clusters.
Commissioning API: Simplifies device set up with Fast Pair on 3 billion Android devices, commission Matter devices directly within your app, enabling seamless onboarding, voice control via Google Assistant, and compatibility with the Google Home ecosystem.
Automation API: Empower your users with all the tools needed to create and manage home automations directly in your app, leveraging extensive signals, commands, and Google specific AI-driven capabilities for personalized and intelligent home experiences.
Essentially, all of this allows developers to use the Google Home platform to power their app’s automations and integrations with other devices. While this can significantly speed up development — it helped Eve finally launch an app for Android — the downside is if Google ever pulled the API access (as it did when it shut down its Works With Nest program), developers would be left high and dry.
However, despite its history here, the likelihood of that happening seems slim. From what I’ve seen, the company does seem to be taking a more thoughtful, thorough approach to the smart home.