Ikea's smart home products have long been the go-to choice for affordable smart home setups, but recent Matter-over-Thread devices have run into serious problems. Apple Home users report being unable to add Ikea's DIRIGERA hub and related devices to their smart home networks, with onboarding processes stalling and timing out.

Ikea acknowledged the connection issues, citing problems in certain home environments and promising to work with ecosystem partners and the Connectivity Standards Alliance. However, The Verge reports that the Matter standard itself is fundamentally broken. The cooperative spirit that defined Matter's early development has given way to Apple, Google, and Amazon pursuing their own agendas.

The promise of Matter as a plug-and-play solution has failed. Manufacturers still bear the burden of ensuring compatibility across platforms before release - the same problem that existed before Matter launched. Users report that repeated add/remove cycles can leave residual states, and even restarting both the DIRIGERA hub and Apple border router devices sometimes fails to resolve the issues.