For over a century, we’ve controlled our homes with switches and buttons. A smart home promises an alternative future of automations, voice controls, and apps. But after it’s all said and done, physical buttons remain one of the best additions you can make to your smart home of Matter devices.
Apps and voice assistants are nice, but nothing tops physical buttons
Don’t get me wrong—I love having the option to turn off lights from my smartwatch or to just ask a voice assistant to do it for me. But relying on those as the only options gets old fast. If a button is nearby, pressing it is faster than swiping through a grid of apps or speaking the wake word to get a voice assistant to start listening.
This is why it’s worth adding Matter-enabled smart buttons to your home. Consider Flic, a company who makes buttons you can stick anywhere and connect to any of your existing Matter devices. In my case, I have several battery-powered lights in my office that I can turn on and off at once by tapping a Flic button by the door. My colleague James Bruce placed a Flic button, with a handy sticker, on the wall for his hallway lights.
James has reviewed a few Flic products for Matter Alpha, like the Flic 2 and the Flic Twist. I only have one Flic button so far, because I’m waiting to check out the Bilresa buttons in IKEA's new Matter lineup, which will cost substantially less. If they work reliably, they will be an even easier recommendation.
BILRESA Remote Control with Dual Button
Every smart device in my home still responds to physical buttons
To be clear, most smart products still have the same physical controls of the non-internet connected versions they’re replacing. My smart switches all function regular light switches. My thermostat looks and feels like any other Honeywell thermostat. I’m not telling you to add buttons back to a home that has gone without. My smart home still functions the same as it did before I added all these gadgets.
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These Matter-connected buttons instead can trigger the devices that are less accessible, like a lamp on the other side of the room or smart blinds near your TV. They can also activate multiple devices as once. One button by the door can turn off all the lights in your house as you leave.
A switch wherever you need it, no electrician required
The promise of Matter is the promise of a modular home that you can expand, modify, and configure as you wish. If you wish the light switch for your living room were in a different place, pairing smart buttons and smart lights can make that happen. With a Flic Duo, which has two buttons, you can set the bottom button to turn the thermostat down as you head for the office and tap the top button to raise the temperature when you get home.
In other words, you don’t have to invest in voice assistants or rely on apps if neither of those appeal to you. In some ways, a house with optimally placed buttons can be even smarter.
