Here’s what’s the Matter with your glitchy Philips Hue bulbs

Philips Hue makes some of the best smart bulbs in the business, but even the renowned smart lighting brand isn’t immune to bugs, and lately it’s been suffering from a glaring one—literally. 

For weeks, Hue users have been complaining that their bulbs have been jumping to 100-percent brightness for no apparent reason. 

The weird behavior seems to happen only when a given Hue light is on, including bulbs that have been set to a “nightlight” scene—and yes, that means plenty of dimmed Hue lights in bedrooms have been zipping up to 100-percent brightness in the middle of the night. 

This news story is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best smart bulbs.

As Android Authority reports, the brightness glitch seems to affect a wide variety of Hue lights, which would seem to rule out a hardware issue with a particular product. 

Hue users have been pulling their collective hair out trying to solve the problem, but without much luck. Luckily, Hue has now chimed in with answers. 

Responding to a query from The Verge, a Hue spokesperson said that Matter, the new platform-uniting smart home standard that’s gotten off to a rocky start, plays a role in the brightness issue. 

“After extensive analysis, we have identified an interoperability issue with the Matter smarthome standard, in which random temporary radio traffic disruptions are incorrectly recognized as legacy switch power toggles, turning low brightness lights to full brightness,” said the Hue rep, who told The Verge that a software fix should arrive “as soon as next week.” 

We’ve reached out to Philips Hue for additional comment. 

Interestingly, I haven’t had any problems with my Hue bulbs lately, and now I know why—because I’ve never bothered to enable the Matter integration on my Hue Bridge. 

Matter is a big deal in the smart home industry because it promises to finally unite the big smart home ecosystems, including Alexa, Apple Home, Google Home, and Samsung SmartThings. 

Ultimately, Matter should eliminate the need for smart home users to ensure that a given device will work with their favorite smart home platform. Instead of worrying about whether (say) your new smart lock works with Apple HomeKit, you’ll just have to look for the telltale Matter logo. 

At present, though, the still-evolving Matter standard comes with lots of sharp edges, and unless you really need it, you can—and probably should—skip upgrading your devices to the new standard. 

That’s especially true with Philips Hue lights, which already work with Alexa, Apple Home, Google Home, and SmartThings, no Matter required. 

In any event, Hue tells The Verge that users who’d rather not wait for the upcoming brightness fix to simply disable the Matter integration on their Hue Bridges.