The bulk of the smart home market now supports the Matter standard. The 2020 Nest Thermostat is the first smart thermostat to join the slow-moving wave, and in doing so, it now works in an Apple Home system without additional bridges or hubs.
Note that only the 2020 Nest Thermostat redesign will be updated with Matter support, starting today and rolling out “over the next few weeks,”according to a Google Nest community post. Google said it is investigating Matter support for the more mainstream Nest (3rd gen) Learning Thermostat and Nest Thermostat E (now mostly available in Europe). Let’s hope that’s the case, because the learning thermostat has the widest compatibility with HVAC systems and is the one we see installed in most homes, at about 100 to zero compared to the 2020 version.
If you have a newer version of Nest, your device will receive an over-the-air update at some point today or in the next few weeks. You will then be able to control your Nest from multiple Matter compatible systems. Nest has already worked with Amazon’s Alexa, Samsung’s SmartThings and, of course, the Google Home platform. But with Matter support, you can set it up to interact with other Matter-enabled devices, such as non-Nest temperature sensors or motion detectors.
The big plus is Apple compatibility thanks to Home’s own Matter readiness. After installing the update, the Nest thermostat itself may generate a Matter pairing code in the new device settings. This should allow you to add the device to your home network and control it from your Apple device without using another device as an intermediary. I use Home Assistant to connect all of my smart home equipment to my iPhone, but I don’t think it’s an easy way in and of itself; I had to sign up for a Google Developer account and create a fake app in order to access the API.
Not that Matter is necessarily light at the moment. There are very few real devices that you can control from the Matter-ready platforms of major tech companies. Some major device makers are taking “big steps back”as the complexity fades. And there are many little compatibility caveats for each platform. But adding a Nest thermostat to the ecosystem, even a relatively new one, seems like it could only help move things forward.