The Matter smart home standard has been a long time in the making, and it was finally launched with much fanfare in late 2022. Big industry players like Google, Amazon, and Apple pledged their support, wanting to create a new platform that makes it easier for smart home manufacturers to build devices that easily interoperate with all platforms and everything else in the home. About half a year later, the consortium behind the standard has launched Matter 1.1, and it’s a far smaller release than you might expect.

Matter 1.1 is mainly concerned with simplifying the certification process for developers and companies. For one, Matter 1.1 added clarifications and cleaned up the specification, which makes it easier to understand and dive into the standard. This is further enhanced thanks to an improved automated testing procedure. Since the SDK is open-source, the certification body is also concerned with improving the contribution process for developers, allowing them to add more device types more easily.

The new version of the standard introduces better support for battery-operated devices, so-called Intermittently Connected Devices (ICDs). Many temperature, contact, and motion sensors are battery-powered, which means that they enter a deep sleep state when they’re not in use, losing the connection to the rest of the smart home intermittently (hence the name). Matter 1.1 makes it easier for smart home ecosystems to understand that these devices are still active and part of the setup, even if they currently have their radios disabled. This should reduce erroneous offline warnings.

Following the release of Matter in 2022, there were 1,135 new devices certified for the standard, with Matter also adding 60 more companies to its alliance after the launch. At the same time, the unifying standard is proving to be less unifying than hoped. Philips Hue postponed the addition of Matter to its Hue Bridge, with no definite date given anymore. Belkin’s smart home brand Wemo also announced that it’s pausing Matter development on its devices, even if it uses some of the same underlying technology in its products, such as Thread.

Another Matter update is slated for later this year, which should add new device types like robot vacuums, appliances, cameras, and energy management. It might still take some time until all the best smart home devices out there are brought together under the standard, though.