Free way to use a Home Assistant Night Mode switch in Alexa without Nabu Casa
I was looking for a simple and completely free way to control my Home Assistant Night Mode from Alexa.
In Home Assistant, my night mode is just an input_boolean. I use it as a central state for automations, for example to change how lights and other automations behave during the night.
I wanted to use it inside Alexa Routines, for example:
- Bedtime routine → Night Mode ON
- Morning routine → Night Mode OFF
At first, I exposed the input_boolean via emulated_hue.
That worked, but Alexa always detected it as a light. This meant that whenever I said:
“Alexa, turn off all lights”
Alexa also turned off my Night Mode.
Even deleting the device and trying to add it again manually as a switch did not help. Alexa still classified it as a light.
I did not want to pay for Nabu Casa just for this, and setting up a manual Alexa Smart Home Skill with AWS Lambda seemed way too complicated for such a simple use case.
My solution: Home Assistant Matter Bridge
I found Home Assistant Matter Bridge by SukramJ:
The project allows Home Assistant entities to be published to Matter-compatible ecosystems such as Alexa, Apple Home and Google Home.
I created a separate Matter Bridge that only exposes:
input_boolean.nachtmodus
I first commissioned the bridge with Apple Home.
After that, I enabled pairing for another Matter ecosystem, which generated a new Matter pairing code.
Then in the Alexa app I added a new Matter device and entered that code.
That was it.
Alexa now sees my Home Assistant Night Mode as a proper switch instead of a light.
So now I can use:
Bedtime Alexa Routine
→ Night Mode ON
Morning Alexa Routine
→ Night Mode OFF
And most importantly:
“Alexa, turn off all lights”
→ all lights turn off
→ Night Mode stays ON
Exactly what I wanted.
Setup in short
Home Assistant
input_boolean.nachtmodus
↓
Home Assistant Matter Bridge
↓
Pair with Apple Home
↓
Enable pairing / Matter Multi-Admin
↓
Generate a new Matter pairing code
↓
Add Matter device in Alexa
↓
Night Mode appears as a normal switch
For me, this turned out to be a very nice free alternative to Nabu Casa, emulated_hue or a custom Alexa Smart Home Skill.
Huge thanks to SukramJ for creating and maintaining Home Assistant Matter Bridge and making this possible.