We Checked What Matter Lets Apple Home, Google Home and Alexa Automate. None of Them Say.

If you are buying a device because the box says it works with Matter, here is the one thing that badge does not promise: that the device can start an automation. It promises your Apple Home, Google Home or Alexa app can find the device and control it. Whether a Matter door sensor can turn on the hallway light, or a Matter leak sensor can wake you up through a routine, is a separate question. We read what all four major platforms publish about Matter for 50 everyday smart-home features, and not one page answers it.

That does not mean Matter automations fail. Many people run them every day. It means the platforms have not written down which ones they stand behind, and when you are choosing hardware on the strength of a badge, what is written down is the only thing you can hold anyone to.

What this means before you buy

Lights, plugs, switches, locks, thermostats, blinds and the common door and motion sensors are on every published list. For those, the Matter route is documented by Apple, Google and Amazon alike. The remaining risk is a particular product doing Matter badly, not the platform turning it away.

Cameras, doorbells, sirens, alarm arming, and smoke, carbon monoxide and leak alarms are a different story. None of the three published lists include them. Devices like these usually reach your platform some other way, through the maker’s own app link or a bridge, and that route is the one to check. Look for the manufacturer saying, in its own words, that the alert you want works on the platform you own. Our product profiles record which route each device uses and what it costs you.

If your home runs on SmartThings, this data cannot help you yet. Samsung publishes no list we could read, and we would rather say so than guess from the other three.

What the platforms publish

Apple, Google and Amazon each publish a page listing the kinds of Matter device their platform supports. Those pages are about pairing and control: add the device, see it in the app, ask a voice assistant to switch it. Google’s page describes its list this way:

Many Matter device types are supported in the Google Home ecosystem, though not all are fully supported. Note: Device types other than the ones listed here are not officially supported in the Google Home ecosystem.

That tells you a Matter motion sensor will show up in the Google Home app. It does not tell you whether a Google Home routine can start when that sensor sees movement. Amazon’s page reads the same way, and so does Apple’s.

That gap is the whole finding. Across 200 combinations of platform and feature, the number a platform documents as usable in a routine or automation is 0.

Apple’s list is the shortest

Apple’s help page lists the Matter accessory types the Home app supports:

The Home app currently supports these types of Matter accessories: air conditioners, bridges, lights, locks, outlets, switches, thermostats, blinds and shades, and sensors (motion, ambient light, contact, temperature, and humidity).

Read it for what is missing. Of the 50 features we track, 32 are not on Apple’s list, including camera video, two-way talk, doorbell presses, smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, leak detection and sirens. Google’s list leaves out 22 and Alexa’s leaves out 27, so this is not only an Apple gap. Apple’s list is simply the shortest.

21 features appear on none of the three lists. Leak detection is one. Arming a security system is another. So is anything a camera does.

A device left off a list is not a device that will not work. It usually means the device reaches the platform a different way. The IKEA KLIPPBOK leak sensor is a good example: leak alerts are on nobody’s Matter list, so what you get depends on what IKEA itself documents, not on the badge. The Aqara G410 doorbell shows the other side. Aqara documents live video on an Echo display through its own app link, not through Matter.

Locks and door sensors are the easier case. Both are on all three lists, which is why a device like the Aqara P2 door and window sensor has a documented Matter route to Alexa and to Google in our records. Each route still needs a compatible hub in the house, and the profile spells that out.

SmartThings publishes nothing we could use

We looked for a Samsung page that lists which Matter device types SmartThings supports, and on 2026-09-04 we could not find one. The help article we checked names no device types, and the developer pages we tried did not answer. So every SmartThings entry in our table reads “control only,” all 50 of them. That is worse than a short list, because a short list at least tells you what is missing. We record it as a gap with a date and check again on a schedule.

How we judged each feature

We only mark a feature as documented for automations when the platform’s own Matter page says so. That gives three possible results, and the table below uses all three:

• Not in the list. The platform publishes a list of what it supports and the feature is missing. Because the page presents itself as complete, that absence counts as an answer.
• Control only. The platform mentions the device type, but everything on the page is about pairing, app control or voice commands. Nothing says the value reaches automations, so we do not say it either.
• Documented for automations. The page places the feature inside routines or automations.

No platform has earned the third result yet.

The data

What would change our answer

Any one of the four platforms publishing a page that lists Matter device types and says which of them can start a routine. That single page would move a lot of features from “control only” to “documented.” It is also the cheapest thing any of them could do for buyers. We re-read these four pages on a schedule and date every reading, so this page reflects what was published on 2026-09-04 and nothing later.