Homebridge 2.0: Matter Support and What It Means For You

Homebridge has spent a decade as the duct tape of the Apple smart home — the project that quietly lets devices like Ring doorbells, Eufy cameras and obscure Tuya light bulbs show up in Apple Home as if they were native HomeKit devices. Homebridge 2.0 is the biggest jump the project has made in years, and the headline change is native Matter support. Here is what that actually means if you are running Homebridge today, or thinking of starting.

Homebridge is a free open-source project that lets devices which were never designed to talk to Apple Home pretend that they are HomeKit-native devices. It runs as a small server on a Raspberry Pi, a Mac, a NAS or any always-on machine. You install plugins for whichever brands you own — Ring, Eufy, Roborock, Tuya, the works — and those devices appear in Apple Home as if Apple had blessed them.

Until Homebridge 2.0, the project worked exclusively through the original HomeKit protocol (HAP). That meant Homebridge could only expose device types that HomeKit understands — lights, switches, sensors, locks, cameras, thermostats. Categories that HomeKit had no idea about (robot vacuums being the obvious one) simply could not be bridged.

Homebridge 2.0 adds Matter as a second protocol it can speak. In practical terms, this lets Homebridge expose devices using Matter device types — including categories that classic HomeKit never supported. The release ships with WaterValve and GenericSwitch support, with the obvious next steps being robot vacuums and air-quality monitors as the Matter device-type library continues to fill out.

If you have spent any time trying to get a Roborock or a Roomba into Apple Home, you know how messy this has been. The Roborock plugin family has been getting hammered with feature requests for years. Matter changes the calculus — you do not need a HomeKit shape for every device. You need a Matter shape, which is the standard the whole industry is now writing to.

It is worth being clear about what Homebridge 2.0 is and is not. It is not a replacement for buying Matter-native devices. If you are starting fresh, Matter-from-the-box devices are simpler — you scan a QR code, the device joins your home network, and Apple Home (or Google Home, or Alexa) picks it up automatically.

Homebridge is for the existing pile of devices in your house that will never get a Matter update from the manufacturer. The Ring doorbell that has been screwed to your door since 2021. The early Eufy camera that requires a cloud account. The Sonos system that pre-dates the Sonos / Matter limited rollout. Homebridge 2.0 with Matter gives those devices a longer useful life, and broadens the set of categories where that life-extension is possible.

The headline breaking change in Homebridge 2.0 is the Node.js requirement. Versions 18 and 20 are out; you need v22 or v24. For most users on the official Homebridge image (Raspberry Pi, hbsd, or the dedicated Synology / QNAP packages), this is handled by upgrading the image itself — the Node runtime ships bundled.

The trickier change is on the plugin side. Plugin authors have to migrate from CommonJS to ES modules, switch their HAP dependency from hap-nodejs to @homebridge/hap-nodejs, and move their output from lib/ to dist/. This is not a small refactor for plugin maintainers, and the practical effect for users is that you should check your installed plugins for 2.0 compatibility before you upgrade. The Homebridge UI plugin list now flags incompatible plugins after the upgrade, but it is much less painful to verify first.

The honest answer depends on how reliant your day-to-day life is on Homebridge. For users who have it running a couple of plugins for cameras and a smart plug, upgrading is straightforward — check the plugin compatibility list, take a backup of your Homebridge config from the UI, and pull the trigger.

For users running Homebridge with a dozen plugins, multiple bridges and complex automation chains, take a more cautious approach. Wait two to four weeks after release for any showstopper bugs to surface and for the plugin ecosystem to catch up. The Matter implementation is the kind of change that benefits from real-world testing across many installations, and the second release after 2.0 will be the easier landing spot for risk-averse users.