Chamberlain Group, makers of myQ connected garage door openers, is discontinuing its myQ Home Bridge Hub, a device whose sole purpose was to connect myQ-enabled garage doors to Apple’s HomeKit smart home platform.
myQ is a smart garage door controller technology that is built into a garage door opener or a separate retrofit wireless hub and connects your garage door to Wi-Fi. This lets you open and close it from anywhere using the myQ smartphone app.
The myQ Home Bridge Hub, which extended that control to the Apple Home app, has been out of stock on Chamberlain’s website for a few weeks, and the company confirmed to The Verge that it’s been discontinued.
“As our products continue to evolve, we have decided to discontinue production of our myQ Home Bridge Hubs,” George Rassas, group product manager at Chamberlain Group, said in an email. He also confirmed that existing Home Bridge Hubs will continue to work “for the foreseeable future.”
He added that since its launch in 2017, less than 1 percent of myQ users were using the myQ Home Bridge. Considering how expensive it was, varying in price from $70 to $90 over the years, that’s not totally surprising. It’s a high price to pay just to add Siri voice control and Apple Home app compatibility to control your garage door.
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When asked, Chamberlain didn’t offer any alternative solutions for its HomeKit users. “Our goal is to provide compelling smart home solutions as we continue to work with leading connectivity brands to deliver seamless products and services that complete the smart home,” Rassas said.
However, myQ has a checkered history of sharing its technology. It briefly charged users a fee for smart home integrations with Google Assistant and IFTTT. Despite partnering with Amazon for its Amazon Key In-Garage delivery service, myQ doesn’t work with Alexa for smart home control of your garage door. And while you can integrate a myQ door with a few smart home systems, including Ring and IFTTT, you’re limited in what you can do with those integrations compared to using myQ’s own app.
If you have a Chamberlain garage door opener (and you probably do — along with its sister companies Liftmaster and Craftsman, Chamberlain owns over 65 percent of the US market), you can’t easily use a third-party retrofit smart controller to add extra smart home control, should you want it. Products from Tailwind, iSmartGate, or Meross — which can work with Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Apple HomeKit — require special adaptors to work with Chamberlain Group brand openers.
The coming Matter smart home standard may fix this issue for users of myQ and HomeKit. Garage door controllers are part of the first Matter specification. When the new standard arrives this fall, it’s possible Chamberlain’s Wi-Fi-connected controllers could be upgraded to support Matter. Apple is fully committed to Matter, so this might bring about a way to connect the two without needing the now-discontinued hub. The Verge has reached out to Chamberlain, which is a member of the Connected Standards Alliance (the organization behind Matter), for clarification. We’ll update this story if we hear back.
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