IKEA Smart Home Devices Now Controllable on SmartThings ...

The average American household now has several smart devices in it ranging from light bulbs to cameras to voice assistants and more. Despite this, things remain largely fragmented for consumer products, and while Matter was originally conceived to fix that, it still has a long way to go. Samsung, however, remains one of the larger companies pushing towards that ubiquitous ecosystem, especially with its new announcement that its SmartThings ecosystem and IKEA’s own smart home products have a new integration through the Matter Bridge.

Samsung explains that the new Matter Bridge feature is meant to simplify the smart home experience by enabling connectivity between SmartThings’ extensive ecosystem and IKEA’s Home smart devices.

Using the feature, IKEA owners can import their existing IKEA smart home setups into SmartThings with reportedly just a few clicks. Existing SmartThings and IKEA users can now enjoy the benefits of both platforms simultaneously.

This also makes it so that IKEA devices will now show up on SmartThing’s Map View, allowing SmartThings users to view IKEA smart devices on a variety of Samsung display products.

According to Samsung, users won’t even have to sacrifice some of the more unique customization options native to the IKEA DIRIGERA hub. For instance, users can still bind remotes directly to a single light or shade. Users can also still use dynamic controls for their devices, such as pressing and holding a dimmer button to gradually increase light levels until released.

Of all the companies participating in the Matter program, Samsung and Google have been perhaps the two most proactive when it comes to living up to Matter’s promised goals. The pair formed a partnership in the early days of the standard that set up dual admin access across both ecosystems and from there have formed several partnerships to further expand their offerings (even though that defeats the purpose of Matter in a way).

What’s noteworthy about the recent news with IKEA however is that Samsung essentially allows users to copy and paste their IKEA setups into the SmartThings ecosystem, meaning existing owners don’t have to go through the hassle of connecting their devices one at a time.

This also opens up the IKEA platform to automations uniquely available on the SmartThings ecosystem, further increasing the functionality of some of IKEA’s products (imagine being able to automate that wild speaker lamp from a while back as a welcome home mood light).

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