SwitchBot’s next smart home hub is taking shape — and it comes with a knob. The unannounced SwitchBot Hub 3 has surfaced in a Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) listing spotted by HomeKitNews and reported by The Verge on November 5, revealing a Matter-enabled hub that trades the Hub 2’s minimalist slab for physical controls, a motion-activated display, and a design that looks more like a remote control than a gateway.
SwitchBot has not officially announced the Hub 3, and there is still no word on pricing or a launch date. But the CSA listing — which first appeared in the alliance’s certified products database in March 2025 — paints a detailed picture of a hub built for people who want to control their home without opening an app.
A knob at the center of the smart home
The biggest change from the Hub 2 is the large rotating knob on the front of the device. According to the CSA listing, the knob handles two everyday jobs: adjusting a smart thermostat’s temperature and controlling media volume. It is compatible with Apple TV, Spotify, and other streaming platforms for unified audio management, and it can also be pressed like a button.
Notebookcheck, which also covered the listing, notes the knob adjusts a connected smart air conditioner by 1°C per step — the kind of fine-grained control that is awkward to do by voice and tedious in an app.
The knob is flanked by physical buttons: a home button, a back button, an on/off toggle, and a button carrying SwitchBot’s “S” logo, which appears to act as a shortcut for a preset automation. The home screen also offers four editable quick-scene buttons for one-touch activation of customized modes, such as a sleep scene.
A display that wakes when you walk past
Above the controls sits a display similar in concept to the one on the $70 Hub 2, which launched in 2023. The Hub 3’s screen turns on when it detects motion — including hand gestures or movement of the device itself — and shows indoor temperature and humidity, third-party weather forecasts, and real-time status updates for door locks.
The lock status is a small but telling detail. Rather than checking a phone to confirm the front door is locked, the hub puts that information on a screen in the room — a glanceable status board for the whole household.
The display and controls sit in a black gloss-finish body, a clear departure from the Hub 2’s sleek reflective design. It looks less like a piece of networking gear and more like something meant to live on a coffee table or bedside table.
Matter bridge for SwitchBot’s Bluetooth devices
Like the Hub 2, the Hub 3 is Matter-certified and acts as a bridge for SwitchBot’s Bluetooth-connected devices, bringing them into the major smart home platforms: Apple Home, Google Home, Amazon Alexa, and Samsung SmartThings. The listing also notes voice control through Alexa and Google Assistant.
That bridging role is what makes the Hub 3 matter beyond SwitchBot’s own ecosystem. SwitchBot sells a large range of retrofit gadgets — curtain motors, button-pressing robots, and devices that make ordinary deadbolts smart — most of which speak Bluetooth rather than Matter or Thread directly. A hub that exposes them to Matter is the on-ramp that lets those devices appear in Apple Home or SmartThings alongside everything else.
The CSA record lists the Hub 3 as a Matter-certified product, which means it has passed the alliance’s certification process rather than merely claiming compatibility — a meaningful distinction in a market where “Matter-compatible” is sometimes used loosely.
Why physical controls are coming back
The Hub 3 arrives at a moment when the smart home industry is rediscovering buttons. Voice assistants and phone apps removed friction for many tasks, but they added it for others: turning down the music while on a call, nudging the thermostat half a degree, or triggering a scene when your hands are full. A knob and a few well-placed buttons solve those jobs faster than unlocking a phone.
SwitchBot is not alone in this shift. Across the industry, vendors are adding tactile controls to devices that were once app-only, betting that the fastest interface is often the one you can operate without looking at a screen.
There is also a household argument. Not everyone in a home wants — or can use — an app or a voice assistant. A hub with a display and a knob gives guests, children, and older family members a way to control the home that needs no account, no phone, and no wake word.
What we still don’t know
For all the detail in the CSA listing, the basics remain unanswered. SwitchBot has not confirmed a release date, a price, or even the Hub 3’s full specifications — including its size, whether it includes the temperature and humidity sensors built into the Hub 2, and which SwitchBot devices it will bridge at launch.
Certification listings have a habit of preceding real products by months, and some certified devices never ship at all. The Hub 3 first appeared in the CSA database in March 2025, and more than a year and a half later SwitchBot still has not announced it — a reminder that a listing is a signal of intent, not a launch.
Still, the direction of travel is clear. If the Hub 3 ships as described, it will be SwitchBot’s most hands-on hub yet: a Matter bridge, a thermostat and media controller, and a glanceable home status display in one device. For a company whose products are largely about retrofitting dumb things into smart ones, a hub you can actually touch fits the brief.
We will update this story when SwitchBot confirms pricing and availability.