Home Assistant 2026.11 adds Matter cameras, with a 720p view and a talk button

Home Assistant 2026.11.0, released November 4, 2026, can show Matter cameras. The Matter integration now turns a Matter 1.5 camera into a camera entity with live video and snapshots, streamed over WebRTC directly between your browser and the camera, and the entity reflects whether the camera's privacy mode is on. A Labs preview adds a talk button for cameras with two-way audio. Before this release the Matter integration had no camera platform, so a camera added over Matter brought no picture into Home Assistant.

The practical audience today is owners of Aqara's Camera Hub G350, the one shipping camera in Home Assistant's own Matter tests. For them, 2026.11 adds a local live view with talkback, but it does not replace the Aqara app or SmartThings yet. The first release has no pan, tilt, night-vision or privacy controls, and a browser view tops out at 720p.

Cameras need Matter Server app 9.3.0

Home Assistant only discovers cameras when its Matter server supports them, which means websocket schema 14 from matterjs-server 1.5.0, released October 20. On Home Assistant OS, that is the Matter Server app 9.3.0, released October 30 with server 1.5.5. If Core is on 2026.11 but the app is older, cameras do not appear. If you run the server yourself in Docker, you need 1.5.0 or later.

What a G350 gets in Home Assistant

The release post names no camera models. Home Assistant's 2026.11 tests include a capture from a real G350 on firmware 4.5.80, which reports Matter 1.5.1. From it, the integration builds a streaming camera entity and an occupancy sensor. The capture also reports a speaker and full-duplex two-way talk, the two things the integration checks before it offers the talk button. Update the camera's firmware in Aqara Home before adding it: a SmartThings community tester found Matter live view broken on early G350 firmware. Firmware 4.5.80 is the version in Home Assistant's capture; Home Assistant documents no minimum. In that capture, the camera is part of the same Matter device as the G350's bridge for Aqara accessories. Home Assistant has not said whether a G350 already paired that way gains the camera without pairing again, so look on the existing device after updating before you add it a second time.

Everything beyond viewing and talking stays elsewhere for now. The capture also carries Matter's pan and tilt controls, but Home Assistant 2026.11.0 exposes no pan, tilt, preset, night-vision or privacy switches for Matter cameras, and the release says nothing about recording. A night-vision control was merged on November 2, after the 2026.11 release was cut, so it is not in 2026.11.0. SmartThings, which announced Matter camera support on December 18, 2025, goes further with the same camera: in August the same community tester reported Matter pan, tilt, presets and privacy modes working on G350 firmware 4.5.70, partly through a modified SmartThings driver the tester wrote. The telephoto lens, tracking and Aqara's own detection features are still run from Aqara Home.

Picture quality is the bigger compromise. The Matter server caps a live view in a browser at 1280 × 720, because every browser offers an H.264 level that cannot decode more, and it runs video at 30 frames per second by default. The G350 capture reports only a 1080p sensor to Matter in the first place, so the 4K wide-angle camera Aqara advertises reaches Home Assistant as a 720p live view. If you already pull the G350's RTSP stream into Home Assistant or a recorder, keep it. Matter adds the talk button and the privacy state.

Sharing the camera with two controllers has a cost too. The G350 capture reports a single video encoder. When the camera has no capacity left, Home Assistant's Matter server can free a stream that another controller set up but is not using, and that controller then has to set it up again. If the G350 also feeds SmartThings, SmartThings can lose an idle stream to Home Assistant.

If you are shopping for a Matter camera for Home Assistant, the G350 is the only shipping one in Home Assistant's tests, but buy it for the zoom, tracking and lens cover you will still run from Aqara Home. A Matter 1.5 certificate on another camera shows less. UGREEN's SynCare ID500 Pro is certified as a Matter 1.5.1 camera but is offered only as an add-on to a HomeAgent pledge, and nothing in that campaign ships before late June 2027.

Talking back needs HTTPS

The talk button is a Labs preview: turn on Two-way audio under Settings > System > Labs. In this release, only Matter cameras and Reolink cameras get it, and Reolink's comes through its own integration over RTSP, not Matter. Browsers allow microphone access only over a secure connection, so two-way audio works when Home Assistant is opened over HTTPS. A plain http:// address on your home network will not do. Home Assistant says it is working on talkback in its apps over HTTP and gives no date.

Three Matter changes to check before updating

The release also changes how existing Matter devices behave, and each of these can break an automation. They are listed under the release's backward-incompatible changes.

• Matter TVOC, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and ozone sensors now use the unit the device reports. A TVOC sensor reporting 189 ppb used to show 189 ppm and now shows 0.189 ppm, so its history jumps and any threshold needs a new number. Set the entity's unit to ppb to keep the old figures with the correct label. TVOC sensors reporting µg/m³ or mg/m³ move to the volatile organic compounds device class, and their old statistics cannot be converted.
• Turning on a Matter thermostat or air conditioner from Home Assistant now resumes its last mode, so an air conditioner switched off while cooling comes back cooling. Room air conditioners with a separate power switch are now actually powered on. Automations that relied on the old heat/cool fallback should set the mode explicitly.
• Matter covers that can only tilt are now tilt covers. Their state is no longer stuck at unknown, but automations must switch to the tilt actions, and voice assistants that open or close them may stop working.

Shade owners also get a reverse-direction switch for Matter window coverings. WAGO's Home Blind Control, in both its Thread and Wi-Fi versions on firmware 2.1.0, gets a blind type setting. A controller already set to roller shutter loses its tilt slider and tilt actions as soon as Home Assistant updates, so an automation that tilts it now fails.

For a G350 owner on Home Assistant OS, the order is: check the three changes above against your automations, back up, update the Matter Server app to 9.3.0, update Core to 2026.11.0, then check the existing device for the camera or add it.