Matter, a standard for Smart Home devices, is slowly getting more attention and support. Recently, Apple added Matter Robot Vacuums to Apple HomeKit. More and more devices are certified for Matter and work with all major Smart Home platforms. While Matter 1.4 already supports a long list of device types, manufacturers and Smart Home platforms take their time to actually implement Matter support. Kitchen appliances, like Dishwashers, Fridges or Freezers, but also Laundry Washers and Dryers are already part of the Matter protocol, but only a handful of devices are announced, and even less of these are actually available. However, Smart Home Centre discovered that Siemens, Bosch and Neff, all brands of the Bosch Group, actually have quite some devices working over Matter already. Not natively on device, but through their Smart Home platform Home Connect and a hub, the Smart Kitchen Dock. This dock, which already exists for a while, bridges Home Connect devices into Matter since the start of this year. This enables Matter support for quite some household appliances, maybe even the one you already have installed in your kitchen or laundry room.
Home Connect & Smart Kitchen Dock
Home Connect is the Smart Home platform / app from Bosch, Siemens, Neff, all brands from the Bosch group. You can add devices like hoods, laundry dryers, coffee machines, fridges, freezers, cooktops, ovens, dishwashers and laundry washers. For this to work, you do need a device from before mentioned brands with Home Connect support, which works over WiFi. After adding these devices to Home Connect in the Android or iOS app, you can control them remotely in the app. Given some security restrictions, you usually need to manually activate remote control on the device, after which you can change settings and start/stop a device in Home Connect. With more and more focus on energy usage, solar panels, home batteries and dynamic energy rates, you can use the remote control functionality to start the laundry washer, dryer or dishwasher when energy prices are low. This is already possible within the Home Connect app. You can set a desired finishing time, while the app will automatically start the device when your energy rate is the lowest within the given timeframe.
The Smart Kitchen Dock, which is available in variants from the different Bosch Group brands since 2022, is a Bluetooth Speaker, Alexa Smart Speaker and Tablet stand. With a dedicated Smart Kitchen Dock app, you can connect your tablet and listen to music over Bluetooth or use the app to find recipes or ask Alexa to control your Smart Home devices. At the beginning of 2025, the device received an update to support Matter 1.2, although Bosch and Siemens gave little public attention to this update. The Smart Kitchen Dock works as a Matter bridge and brings non-Matter devices into Matter. Currently, Laundry Washers, Dishwashers and Fridges/Freezers are supported. All the devices within these device types with support for Home Connect can be bridged into Matter with the Smart Kitchen Dock. In April 2025, the Smart Kitchen Dock is certified for Matter 1.3, which supports Microwave Ovens, Ovens, Cooktops, Extractor Hoods and more advanced support for Laundry Dryers. While the device is now Matter 1.3 certified, it still needs an update to actually support these devices. However, it does show continued support from the Bosch group to enable Matter support through this device.
Enabling Matter on the Smart Kitchen Dock
Smart Home Centre was able to add a Bosch Dishwasher to Home Connect. After adding your first device to Home Connect which is supported by the Matter bridge functionality, you will be able to enter the Matter settings within the Smart Kitchen Dock app. During setup of this app, you will connect it to your Home Connect account (and Alexa). Slightly annoying is the fact that you can only enter the Matter (and other) settings when your tablet of smartphone is docked, but you only need to setup Matter once. The app will generate a Matter QR code and a numeric code, which you can use to connect the dock to your Smart Home platform. We’ve added the Smart Kitchen Dock to Apple HomeKit, Home Assistant, Aqara Home and Google Home, with different results.
Apple HomeKit
We’ve managed to add the Smart Home Dock to Apple HomeKit as a hub, but unfortunately, this will just add the hub, without any of the appliances. Apple HomeKit unfortunately does not support these device types yet, and given their track record, it could take a while for this to change. For now, no harm to leave the dock connected and hope to see a dishwasher appearing in a future iOS update.
Home Assistant
Home Assistant is known to very quickly support the latest Matter device types. After connecting the Smart Home Dock to Apple HomeKit, you can create a paring code to add it to other Smart Home platforms. This will add the Smart Kitchen Dock, with your connected devices, in our case a Bosch Dishwasher. Within Home Assistant, you will have 6 control options and a sensor for the operational state: either running, stopped, paused or error. You can control the Mode, in our case to 9 different programs like ‘Intense 70°C’ or ‘Eco 50°C’. There is also a button for pause, resume, start and stop, and switch to turn the power on or off. You will also receive logs of the changes to the device, like when it starts running or when a mode is changed.
Do note, you will need to actually activate remote control after adding the dishes to the device, otherwise you cannot control the dishwasher. You will still be able to monitor status changes, but after the door is opened, you will always need to activate the remote control to enable control in Home Assistant or other platforms. This is similar to devices like a laundry washers, but also makes sense as you always need to manually load a device and choose to not directly operate it, but activate remote control to start it later through your Smart Home platform.
Like other devices you can add your device as trigger or action in an automation, which mainly allows you to get notifications when the dishes are clean or to reduce energy costs with dynamic energy rates by dynamically changing the start moment. In our case, the light ring of our Aqara Ceiling Light T1M turns green when our laundry washer is done, which is a nice reminder to hang up / dry the laundry. You can also use a voice assistant to control your device.
Aqara Home
In April 2025, Aqara added support for over 40 new Matter devices through their hubs. Dishwashers, Laundry Washers and Dryers are also included. When adding the Smart Kitchen Dock to the Aqara Home app using a hub like the Aqara Hub M3 or the newly released Aqara Hub M100, you will see your supported devices from Home Connect in the Aqara app. The Dishwasher shows the current status like Working or Stopped and four control buttons: Pause, Stop, Start and Resume. There is no option to control the mode like in Home Assistant, but given the recent addition of this device type, this might be added later, as it is part of the Matter support for dishwashers. In your automations, you can use a device status change as a trigger and control the device as an action. Controlling the device will, as mentioned before, only work after you manually enable remote control on the device after each time you load the dishes.
Google Home
You can also add the Smart Kitchen Dock to Google Home if you have a Matter hub like the Google TV Streamer or Nest Hub 2. This will add your supported devices to the Google Home app and adds a Start/Stop button, a on/off switch and a mode selection like in Home Assistant. Within your routines / automations, you can use the dishwasher as a trigger, like when it’s turned on or off or when it started or stopped. As an action, you can turn the device on or off and start, stop, pause or resume the device. Other devices types like a laundry washer will probably have similar controls over Matter, while a fridge or freezer will probably mainly enable temperature control and monitoring.
Wrap-up Matter Appliances
With the Smart Kitchen Dock, you can currently add dishwashers, laundry washers and fridges /freezers to your Smart Home platform. Apple HomeKit currently doesn’t support these devices yet, while Google, Aqara and Home Assistant can already be used to control and monitor these devices. With the slow support for native Matter support for these device types, it might very well be interesting to use the Smart Kitchen Dock as a hub to enable Matter for multiple devices from Siemens, Bosch and Neff. As Home Connect is already available for several years, you might already own a Smart appliance from these brands. Home Connect is however mainly supported with more expensive models.
According to the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA), there is currently one dishwasher with native Matter support from MIDEA, but this device doesn’t seem to be available at this moment. There are however some NXP microcontrollers certified, which might add matter support to laundry washers or dryers with this microcontroller installed. Bosch also announced the Bosch 100 Series Refrigerator with native Matter support for 2025. With the recent Matter 1.3 certification of the Smart Kitchen Dock, support for more types of appliances within the Home Connect app is likely to happen later this year.
If you like to receive the latest Smart Home news and more updates on future Matter support of kitchen and laundry appliances, you can sign up for our newsletter below.
