Adding my old Vacuum cleaners to Apple Home

<Updated 17/2/2026 to include updated Matter Hub>

One of the classes of devices we've been waiting for the longest in Apple Home is the ability to add Vacuum Cleaners and that finally came with a combination of Matter 1.4 and iOS/iPad OS/TVOS 18.4.

Whilst Apple still has not implemented the whole of Matter 1.4, it did actually do it for Vacuum cleaners. Indeed, it even delayed the capability to make sure that the full functionality of Matter 1.4 was included.

This was great news for anyone who bought a new Vacuum cleaner that is Matter compliant, and there are a few of them now.

Not such great news for those of us that already had Vacuum cleaners that the manufacturers were not going to upgrade to Matter at all. In my case it is a mixture of iRobot and EcoVacs Deebot. It was particularly annoying for me as I'd just bought the Deebot T20 having given up on iRobot due to their terrible Customer Service.

I digress.....

For sometime I'd actually had my iRobot Vacuum cleaners in Homebridge, and I found the integration there to be superior to Home Assistant. Indeed, I found it extremely difficult to add them to HA. When I got my T20, I then found the integration with HA was far superior than Homebridge. In both cases, they would appear in Apple Home as a series of switches which, whilst useful, was not really fantastic.

Then a few things happened :

• The aforementioned Matter Support for Vacuum cleaners which came in Matter 1.3 and was further improved in Matter 1.4
• Apple Home supporting Matter Vacuum Cleaners
• Matterbridge
• Matter Hub ported on top of Home Assistant.
• I finally got my iRobot devices into Home Assistant.

So, Matterbridge is to Matter what Homebridge is to Apple Home. That is, it takes products and gives them Matter capability. When I first looked at it, it had very little functionality in terms of plugins.

Matter Hub started off as a port of Matterbridge on top of Home Assistant, and then got completely re-written to what it is today as is more akin to the Home Assistant HomeKit Bridge. Matterbridge has also continued development.

In writing this blog post, I took another look at Matterbridge, and it seems they now have a HomeAssistant plugin, so there are two options for implementation. I, though, am using Matter Hub as I find it to be more flexible.

Adding the Vacuum cleaners to Home Assistant.

Deebot Ecovacs

This integration is built into Home Assistant, so it is a standard integration. Nothing extra to download.

You have two choices:

1. via the cloud and so is reliant upon your internet connection, or
2. locally via what is referred to as "self-hosted"

Self-hosted does require downloading and setting up more. The cloud integration just requires user name and password for your Ecovacs account. At the time of writing I am using the cloud integration, but I will move over to self hosted when I have the time.

When set up, what you see is:

 as well as the map it is using.

iRobot Roomba

This is also a standard integration but it is far from easy. You will need to run some CLI commands to get the info you need, which is the BLID and password of the device. There's a really good write up on how to do it on Tanner's tech.

As I have two Roomba's I initially see:

Then when I click on "Daneel Olivaw":

The interface for iRobot isn't as good as Ecovacs, such as no map.

Integration with Apple Home via Matter

Setting up the Matter Hub.

First of all you have to install the Matter Hub. Before February 26 This is an Add-on. You go into "Settings" in HA, and you'll see a list. 5th one down is Add-ons.

From feb 2026 onwards it is now known as an App. Same thing, just different name.

Clicking on "Add-ons" or "Apps" will take you into that area of HA.

Now you can see that I already have the Matter Hub installed (2nd down in the right column), but if I didn't then you click on "Add-on store", which takes you into a list of Add-ons. Unfortunately, Matter Hub is not in the list, so you click the 3 vertical dots, and select "Repositories"

You know are in "Manage add-on repositories" where you can add a new repository.

Using this link: https://github.com/riddix/home-assistant-addons, press Add, and it should appear. You can see it at the top of my list.

There is a Matter Hub control panel that you can use to make some setup changes, as well as start the Hub.

You can see my choices.

Adding the Vacuum cleaners to Matter Hub.

You open the Web UI, and then you want create a new bridge. Due to an implementation issue with Apple Home, you have to have a seperate bridge for each Vacuum Cleaner.

On Creating a new bridge, you go into config.

The port is automatically chosen for you, and starts at 5540.

Whilst it does say you do not need the country, I put it in anyway. The list of codes is here. 

You get to choose your name.

Then you get into includes and excludes.

When I originally did this, I used the Domain included is "vacuum" and I told it to exclude the other two robots by name. If you only have one robot, then you only need to use the include statement. However, I've since realised that you can just you "pattern" and the id of your vacuum cleaner. Here you can see I'm configuring Marvin, and so the entity id is vacuum.marvin.

Continue to scroll down, and you will get to the section "Feature Flags".

Somethings are turned on by default, but you MUST make sure that "Server Mode" and "Auto Battery Mapping" are selected.

Again, scrolling down and ignoring the "Submit" button...

You will see "Preview Matching Entities". I highly recommend you select that as if it isn't going to work, then you can go back easily and change your include/exclude.

You don't have to, but you can also select your Bridge Icon.

Click on "Save" and the bridge will be created for you.

Her you can also see the one I created for some Thermostats.

If you click on the bridge, you will now be taken into a new screen that shows the QR code.

If you want to make sure everything is working, scroll down a bit further and you can see that the Battery has been automatically added. I can confirm this works for both the Roomba and Deebot.

Adding the Matter Bridge to Apple Home.

This is as simple as adding any accessory.

It's not very descriptive, but where either says "Matter Accessory" is the bridge from Home Assistant.

If you then scan in the QR code from the Matter Hub, then you re good to go. It will say it is an "Uncertified Accessory", but just select "Add Anyway", and carry on as normal.

Eventually you will see it in Apple Home.

What can you do with it in Apple Home?

You can :

• See how much battery you have and if it is charging, or not.
• start and stop it
• With the Deebot and, I believe Dreame, you can select which rooms. This info is not stored by the Roomba integration.
• make it play a sound so you can locate it.
• get it to return to Dock.
• monitor it, and it will tell you if something is wrong.