Flic is ready to control all your Matter devices

Shortcut Labs has been openly working toward the goal of turning its smart home hubs - the Flic Hub LR and the Flic Hub Mini - into Matter controllers for quite a while, and now the company tells The Verge it has done it. On Friday, Shortcut will release an update that, according to the company, lets its devices easily act as independent hubs for Matter devices without being part of the ecosystems from companies like Apple, Amazon, Google, or Samsung.

It's a compelling idea: a way to build out a smart home without turning to one of the big tech companies and the privacy concerns and attempts at lock-in that come with that. Part of the promise of the Matter standard is that it gives users freedom of choice, but we've still mostly had to use at least one of those big ecosystems. Flic's Matter controller update hints at a fuller version of that promise.

Shortcut Labs cofounder Joacim Westlund Prändel wrote in an email to The Verge that while the Flic with Matter can (for instance) control Apple Home devices after they're paired with Flic, it's not quite a two-way street. You can't, for example, add a Flic device to the Apple Home app using Matter. You can, however, add Flic 2 buttons to Apple's app through the devices' already-existing HomeKit integration (though only with the Flic Hub LR, as the Hub Mini isn't HomeKit certified).

Creating a Matter controller also allows the company's Flic Twist, a smart button with a dial that's useful for things like dimming lights or controlling smart blinds, to work with other products that use the standard. That's because Matter doesn't already support devices like the Twist. "In effect, our Flic Twist is the first rotational thing that you can do with Matter, which I think is really cool," Prändel said.

Shortcut Labs is relatively unknown in the tech world, and that's part of what's exciting about its Matter controller rollout. If such a small company can pull it off, maybe others will follow suit, bringing clever concepts and ideas along with them.