Every Matter version, and what shipped in each

The full release history#

Four things most articles get wrong#

These errors circulate widely, including in vendor blog posts and press coverage. They are worth correcting because they change what you conclude about buying.

EV charging and energy management arrived in 1.3, not 1.4. Matter 1.3 shipped on 8 May 2024 with the EV charger and device energy management device types, plus electrical power and energy measurement clusters. Matter 1.4 in November 2024 added the other half of home energy: solar power, battery storage, heat pumps and water heaters. If you read that "Matter added EV charging in 1.4", the article is wrong by one release and six months. Matter for energy covers what any of it means in a real house.

Every large appliance came in 1.2. Refrigerators, temperature controlled cabinets, room air conditioners, dishwashers, laundry washers, robot vacuums, air purifiers, air quality sensors and smoke and CO alarms all arrived together on 23 October 2023. There was no later appliance wave. Kitchen appliances got a second group in 1.3 (ovens, cooktops, microwaves, extractor hoods, laundry dryers), but the headline categories are all 1.2.

Joint Fabric is not new in 1.6. The joint fabric administrator device type has existed since Matter 1.4, as provisional. What 1.6 did was make it certifiable. That is a meaningful step, but it is not an invention, and it is not a shipping feature: no consumer ecosystem has released user-facing Joint Fabric. Its predecessor, Fabric Sync from 1.4, was never shipped by anyone in more than 19 months. Sharing a Matter device across ecosystems explains what Joint Fabric would change if it ever arrives.

Matter 1.6 added no new device types. It is a feature release: Joint Fabric promoted to certifiable, full NFC commissioning with no Bluetooth required, thermostat suggestions, device capability reporting and security sensor event history. The device type total stayed at 92. Coverage that treats 1.6 as a device expansion is describing something that did not happen.

What the version number does not tell you#

It does not tell you what your controller supports. The specification is a document. Support is code that an ecosystem has to write, certify and ship. As of September 2026, reporting from the alliance's own June 2026 event summarized Apple, Google and Amazon as being "barely at 1.3", six months after 1.6 was published. The clearest single data point: Google shipped the Matter 1.2 appliance device types in September 2025, roughly 23 months after that specification.

It does not tell you what your device supports. A device certified against 1.5 implements the clusters its device type requires, not everything in the release. A camera certified to 1.5 does not automatically do pan, tilt and zoom, and a plug certified to 1.3 does not automatically report energy.

It does not tell you whether hardware exists. Soil sensors and irrigation systems became device types in 1.5. Almost no hardware exists for either. A device type in the specification is permission for someone to build a product, not evidence that they did.

Spec date against shipping support#

This is the same information in the form that actually helps you decide:

The pattern across that table is consistent. SmartThings and Home Assistant track the specification closely; Apple, Google and Amazon do not. SmartThings shipped Matter 1.5 about a month after publication and is the only ecosystem where a Matter camera works at all. Home Assistant moved its Matter server to a new implementation in June 2026 and reached Matter 1.6 the following month, though that new implementation had not been re-certified by the alliance, so certification-based comparisons still list it lower. Both of those statements are true at once, which is a good illustration of why "which version" is a harder question than it looks.

The Matter feature gap tracker is the maintained version of this comparison, and the seven platforms compared covers everything else that differs between controllers.

Which release changed what, in practice#

1.0 (Oct 2022) set the shape: IPv6 only, Wi-Fi, Thread and Ethernet, Bluetooth LE commissioning, and 42 device types covering lights, switches, plugs, locks, thermostats, window coverings, sensors, fans, media players and bridges. Almost everything most homes own is still in this baseline.

1.1 (May 2023) fixed developer pain and improved handling of intermittently connected battery devices, plus the commitment to two releases a year that the alliance has kept.

1.2 (Oct 2023) was the appliance release, and it also brought the air quality clusters covering particulates, carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, VOCs, carbon monoxide, ozone, radon and formaldehyde.

1.3 (May 2024) brought energy and water: electrical power and energy measurement, EV charging, device energy management, water valves, leak, freeze and rain detection. It also made scenes a standard feature and added command batching, which is one of the fixes for the popcorn effect.

1.4 (Nov 2024) was the home energy release (solar, battery storage, heat pumps, water heaters) plus enhanced multi-admin and a combined Wi-Fi access point and Thread border router device type. It also let long idle time battery devices sleep for up to 18 hours, which matters for coin cell sensors.

1.4.1 (May 2025) and 1.4.2 (Aug 2025) are setup and security releases rather than capability releases. 1.4.1 added in-app terms and consent capture, multi-device QR codes, and an NFC tag carrying the onboarding payload. 1.4.2 added Wi-Fi commissioning without Bluetooth, vendor ID verification, access restriction lists and certificate revocation, and required border routers to be Thread 1.4 certified and support at least 150 devices.

1.5 (Nov 2025) was the largest release since 1.0: cameras over WebRTC, a redesigned closures model for garage doors, gates and shades, soil sensing, energy tariff and carbon intensity data, TCP transport for large payloads and bidirectional EV charging. Matter cameras covers what is real, which is less than the release notes suggest.

1.5.1 (Mar 2026) was a camera correction release: multi-stream video and audio in one session, HEIC snapshots, HLS and DASH upload, pan tilt zoom home position fixes and chime sound selection.

1.6 (Jun 2026) is the feature release described above.

Reading a release like a buyer#

Three questions get you from a release announcement to a decision.

Did it add a device type, or a feature? A new device type creates a category that hardware can be built in. A feature changes how existing devices behave. 1.2, 1.3, 1.4 and 1.5 added categories. 1.1, 1.4.1, 1.5.1 and 1.6 did not.

Does hardware exist? Search the alliance's certified product database for the device type before you assume it does. Soil sensors, irrigation systems and most of the 1.5 camera subtypes have very little or nothing certified against them.

Does your controller render it? This is the one that decides your experience, and it is the one no release announcement addresses. Energy is the sharpest example: EV chargers have been in the specification since May 2024, hardware exists, and Apple Home, Google Home and Alexa still expose none of it. Solar, batteries and EV charging covers what to buy in the meantime.

What comes next#

The alliance releases roughly twice a year. The categories still missing after 92 device types are known, and most of them appear in the draft 1.7: security and alarm panels, keypads, sirens, multi-room and streaming audio, humidifiers and dehumidifiers, circuit breakers and electrical panels, camera AI analytics, robot mowers and pet feeders. Which device types Matter supports covers the current state of each category, and what Matter still cannot do covers the gaps that are not about device types at all.

Do not plan a purchase around a draft. The distance from "in the specification" to "in your app" has run from six months at the fastest to nearly two years at the slowest, and some features, including Fabric Sync, never made the trip.