Amazon announces Matter-over-Thread is coming to Echo devices this spring

Last month, Amazon revealed it was working on a phased rollout of Matter support to its devices. Now the company has confirmed it’s also bringing Matter-over-Thread support later this year.

At CES 2023, Amazon announced Matter-over-Thread support will be coming to Echo devices this spring, according to The Verge. Along with that support, the company will turn its Echo 4th gen smart speaker into a Matter controller and a Thread border router.

If you’re not familiar with Thread, it’s a wireless protocol based on Zigbee, a low-power standard used by a number of smart home manufacturers. You can find out more about it here.

As the Thread rollout happens, Amazon announced that it will enable credentials sharing for Thread. This should help prevent the issue of multiple Thread networks being created when multiple border routers from other manufacturers fail to talk to each other.

About the credentials sharing update, Matt Davidson, senior product manager of Matter at Amazon, told The Verge:

The credentials sharing feature simplifies the setup of Matter over Thread compatible smart home devices by facilitating the sharing of Thread credentials between Alexa and developer apps. Our Matter setup flow for Thread devices will allow the user to connect their Thread device to any Thread network in the home (similar to their ability to connect to any Wi-Fi network for Wi-Fi devices) in addition to using the network created by an Echo device (4th Gen).

As expected, the e-commerce giant announced that it is expanding Matter support to more device types such as thermostats, blinds, and sensors. Additionally, Amazon confirmed the rest of its portfolio of compatible Echo and Eero devices will be updated to support Matter by spring.

Finally, Amazon revealed that the Alexa app will be updated to remember when you change a device name in the app or the manufacturer’s app. This means when you add a device to Alexa and name it, that name will be shared with the manufacturer app. The iOS version of the app will also be updated in the spring to support adding Matter devices.

At the moment, there aren’t a ton of Matter devices on the market as the smart home standard only launched a few months ago. So this news may not affect you immediately. However, once more devices are available, this should be a big help when building out your smart home.