iOS 18 will bring Adaptive Lighting to Matter smart bulbs

Eagle-eyed Reddit users have spotted that Nanoleaf Essentials smart lights have Apple’s Adaptive Lighting feature enabled in the beta of iOS 18.1. As first reported in The Verge, the Adaptive Lighting feature is enabled by default in the Nanoleaf Essentials lineup, which is the first time that Matter lights have been able to use the Adaptive Lighting feature in Apple Home.

The Verge confirmed with Nanoleaf that they are one of the partners involved in the launch of Adaptive Lighting for Matter products within the Apple Home app . This means that the feature will be coming to other Matter products at some point, too. Hopefully, we will eventually see all Matter smart lights and bulbs being able to use Adaptive Lighting within Apple Home.

What is Adaptive Lighting in Apple Home?

Your smart lights can change temperature throughout the day

Braden Newell / Pocket-lint

Adaptive Lighting is Apple’s version of a feature that allows your smart lights and smart bulbs to automatically change color temperature throughout the day. Most smart bulbs are able to use different color temperatures, from warm yellows to cooler blues. However, you usually need to manually switch between these color temperature settings if you want to change your lighting from one to another.

Adaptive Lighting in the Apple Home takes care of this for you. It automatically changes the color temperature of your bulbs and lights throughout the day. When you wake up, your lights have warmer tones, then during the middle of the day the color temperature automatically changes to something cooler to help you focus on what you’re doing. In the evening, blue light is removed from your smart lights, to help you wind down for sleep.

All of this is controlled through the Apple Home app, but you need a home hub, such as a HomePod or an Apple TV 4K to send the relevant commands to your bulbs. Currently, however, Adaptive Lighting doesn’t work with bulbs that connect via Matter, even though you are able to add these bulbs and lights to Apple Home.

Apple Home isn’t the only option for this type of feature, however. The Philips Hue app includes a scene called Natural Lighting which does a similar thing with Philips Hue bulbs, and I’ve been using a version of Adaptive Lighting in Home Assistant for several years.

Why does adding Adaptive Lighting via Matter matter?

You’ll have more options for bulbs, including the biggest brands

Matter

Matter is a smart home connectivity protocol developed in collaboration with some of the biggest names in the smart tech business, including Apple, Google, Amazon, and Samsung. The intent was to create a standard that would allow smart home tech from different manufacturers to interact with each other across the many different smart home ecosystems that exist.

This means that if you buy a Matter-compatible smart bulb, you can connect it to Apple Home, or Google Assistant, or Alexa , and it should in theory work in exactly the same way. You don’t need to worry about whether it’s HomeKit-compatible, Google Home-compatible, or Alexa-compatible; if it’s Matter-compatible, it will work with all three.

Currently, Adaptive Lighting in Apple Home doesn’t work with Matter bulbs and lights. This is a real bone of contention for people like myself, who have Philips Hue smart bulbs and smart lighting products in their homes. That’s because, like many others, I updated my Philips Hue Bridge so that it was compatible with Matter devices. Unfortunately, by doing so, it meant that I could no longer use Adaptive Lighting with my Hue bulbs.

As yet, there’s no confirmation that Philips Hue smart bulbs will be able to use Adaptive Lighting in iOS 18, but with Nanoleaf stating that it is just one of the partners involved in the launch, we should see more Matter lighting products from other manufacturers that will support Adaptive Lighting. This is good news for consumers, who will have more choice. Eventually, it may be the case that any Matter-compatible bulb or light you buy will be able to take advantage of Adaptive Lighting in Apple Home.