Homebridge 2.5.0 was published on GitHub on 1 November 2026 at 15:38 Warsaw time. It is the first feature release since 2.4.0 in mid-August, and most of the changelog concerns the Matter side of Homebridge: new device types for home energy, more modes for climate devices and a long list of fixes to the accessory cache.

Energy device types

Plugins can now expose solar inverters, home batteries, EV chargers, electricity meters and tariffs as Matter devices (#4034). Before this release, Homebridge had no Matter device types for this kind of equipment, so a plugin for an inverter or a charger had nothing suitable to map it to. The release also adds a water heater device type with handlers for mode changes and boost.

These are building blocks for plugin authors. A user will see the new device types only after the plugin for their inverter, charger or boiler adopts them, and only in a Matter controller that knows how to display them.

Climate, air quality and robot vacuums

  • A fan turns on auto mode when it declares a fan mode sequence that offers it.
  • A room air conditioner gets auto mode if it starts in auto or declares a deadband.
  • An air quality sensor can report every level, not only "good" and "poor".
  • A robot vacuum can expose a direct mode change (#4001).
  • A thermostat that registers after the bridge is online now shows its temperature.

Cache and stability fixes

A large part of the release fixes how Homebridge stores Matter accessories between restarts. Restored accessories keep their owner and their unique ID, so the cache no longer loses them on alternate restarts. A read error no longer wipes the cache, malformed entries are skipped, and a failed save is reported without blocking shutdown. Homebridge also validates stored Matter credentials (#4006) and reads the matter.js fabric storage to report whether a device is commissioned.

In the UI, newly registered accessories appear without a restart, light commands no longer fail when sent together, and state changes keep showing after a child bridge starts. Names, models or serial numbers that are too long are shortened, with a log message saying which.

Dependencies and plugin API

The Matter stack moves to matter.js 0.18.0, "with the changes its new checks need", and HAP-NodeJS goes to 2.3.0. For plugin developers there is a new isMatterExternalsOnly flag, matching the existing isHapExternalsOnly, and plugins can read whether HAP is enabled on a bridge. Matter is now enabled for main bridge plugins only when the main bridge itself uses Matter.

Outside Matter, plugin discovery makes fewer filesystem calls, child bridges no longer collide when requesting ports, and Homebridge accepts a config.json that starts with a UTF-8 byte order mark.

Updating

As usual, the update can be installed from the Homebridge UI or with npm. Anyone running Matter accessories through Homebridge should check that their plugins still register correctly after the matter.js update, since the release notes mention changes made to satisfy its new checks.