Exploring Bridges in Home Assistant

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Hi guys and girls! I’m curious to learn more about the different bridges available in Home Assistant and how they actually work.

I actively use the HomeKit Bridge, which does a great job of exposing devices from Home Assistant to Apple Home, allowing them to be controlled as if they were native Apple devices.

I’m also impressed by the SmartThings integration — it makes it possible to bring SmartThings ecosystem devices into Home Assistant, which is really convenient.

Could someone explain how it works with Google Home and Amazon Alexa? Are those limited to cloud control via the paid Nabu Casa subscription, or are there alternative connection methods? Maybe I’ve missed something — I’d really appreciate any advice or insights.

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There are integrations for both Google Assistant and Alexa.

Neither require HA Cloud, but they both require Remote Access and HA Cloud is recommended as the easiest method to get them connected.

Depending on the devices you have, you may be able to use the Matter integration to control devices connected through Alexa or Google Home.

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