The New SmartThings App

In addition to unveiling the new SmartThings Hub and lineup of sensors today, we’re also really excited to pull back the curtains on a brand-new app experience.

The free SmartThings app has been redesigned for easier navigation and a more intuitive experience.

Check out this quick video walking through some of the new features, or read on below:


New App Organization

One of the first things you’ll notice is that we’ve updated the organization of the app. On the bottom of the screen, you’ll notice five icons corresponding to the main areas of the app: Dashboard, My Home, Routines, Notifications, and Marketplace.dashboard

Dashboard

The Dashboard will be where you access Smart Home Monitor to check the status of your home, see what’s happening right now, and adjust settings for monitoring and notification.

For existing SmartThings users, the Dashboard will contain everything you are used to seeing today except for the Things view which has been moved under My Home. While there are improved ways to achieve the same things, SmartThings solutions such as Doors and Locks, Lights and Switches, and Damage and Danger will continue to exist alongside the new installation of Smart Home Monitor.

app-screens-ifa-homeMy Home

The new SmartThings app allows greater options for customization. Name your location and group your smart devices by the physical rooms in your home. This allows you to better organize your smart home in a way that makes sense to you.

Once you’ve grouped your smart devices by room, you can also select a “featured device” that will appear prominently at the top of the screen within each room. The featured device is intended to be the most important or most frequently used device within each room and offers rich control capability to help you brighten and dim your lights, adjust your thermostat, lock and unlock your door, access camera feeds to see live footage of what’s happening in your home, and more.app-screens-ifa-routines


My Home also provides a view of all of the Things in your home with current status, a list of SmartApps you have installed, and, if you have connected individual family members to SmartThings, you can see a summary of who is at home
.

Routines

Routines allows you to personalize how your smart home works by customizing different actions to automatically happen when you wake up, go to sleep, leave for the day or return home. You can even create new routines to accommodate your lifestyle.

app-screens-ifa-notificationsNotifications

Notifications keeps you up to date on what’s happening in your home through two sections. Messages provides a summary of the actions SmartThings has taken at your request, and notifications or alerts you’ve asked to receive. Activity Feed is a running list of all events from your connected things, such as motion, temperature, doors opening and lights turning on and off.app-screens-ifa-marketplace

SmartApp Marketplace

Marketplace is the one destination to browse and discover a full list of SmartThings-compatible devices (Things) as well as SmartApps developed by the SmartThings team and developers from the community.

Two of the most important SmartApps are described in more detail below.

Smart Home Monitor

One of the most exciting new features of the new SmartThings app experience is Smart Home Monitor—an integrated home monitoring solution. Smart Home Monitor allows users to receive alerts and take action when SmartThings detects unwanted entry or motion, smoke or fire, leaks, or other important activity. Existing customers will see Smart Home Monitor in their dashboard within a day and new customers will have it automatically installed and ready to configure.

shmWith Smart Home Monitor and a connected camera, customers can also get instant alerts with an accompanying video-clip when these unexpected events occur. Video buffering in the hub means clips can start prior to the event so you can see exactly what is happening in your home. SmartThings video functionality is currently in beta and can be accessed with cameras from Samsung and D-Link.

Smart Home Monitor is organized into four categories: Security, Smoke, Leaks, and Custom—which allows you to customize different things that may not fall into any of the other three categories. Within each category, there are default settings to help you choose what you’d like your smart home to do. For example, an intrusion alert could automatically trigger several actions: capturing video, sending you a notification, turning on a light, and setting off an alarm.

And, of course, you remain in control and can determine the best response—whether you decide to call your plumber, notify the police or turn off an alarm.

The core Smart Home Monitor application is available for free to all users. Video clips will be a premium feature within Smart Home Monitor but are available in beta as a free trial through 2015. After the free trial, a premium version of Smart Home Monitor, which includes video clips, will be available for $4.99 per month. Live streaming will always be free.

Smart Lights

Smart Lights delivers a simple tool to configure and customize how lighting works in your home. You can automate your lights and switches based on a variety of events, including: motion, when people arrive and leave home, at sunrise or sunset and more.

Please visit the SmartThings Knowledge Base for more information and setup help.

 

 

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Join the conversation! 81 Comments

  1. Part of the reason I invested in SmartThings in the first place is that it supports Windows Phone. Is this new app ever planned to come to that platform as well? Or do I have to start thinking about an entirely different migration than the v1 to v2 one?

    Reply
    • Our windows app will not be updated to our new experience right away. The Windows app is currently being developed and we will keep our customers informed to any updates regarding the new Windows Mobile App.

      Although, we are excited to tell you our current Windows Mobile app will support our new Smart Home Monitor and Smart Lighting starting today!

      Reply
      • Will the app be Windows 10 universal?

        Reply
        • If the Windows Mobile app is in development, a Windows 10 Universal app which can run on my PC, Tablet, Phone (and potentially Xbox One) would indeed be great.

          Reply
        • This is a great question. I am hoping the Windows 10 app will also be compatible with Cortana in W10 and XBox1, then I can tell the Xbox to turn off the lights. Who needs Alexa?

          Reply
          • Yes, exactly. I have a cheap Windows 10 tablet mounted in my kitchen I’d love to install it on.

        • Yup, without a Windows 10 Universal App, there is really no value in me purchasing a SmartThings system. Just the fact that they are delaying any Microsoft support at all is extremely frustrating, while Insteon is fully committed for example. Doesn’t make me feel good about SmartThings, but this isn’t much of a surprise since Samsung has purchased them. Not a good track record in being open and inclusive.

          Reply
      • Actually I just got my SmartThings v2 hub (have not previously used smartthings, have been pure Insteon but got SmartThings to do security) and your app is not available on the windows phone store period. How exactly am I supposed to activate my brand new hub when your app isn’t even available!?!?

        Reply
        • So clarification for everyone else. If you already have the app on your phone you are fine, but if you don’t, you can even download the old app right now.

          Reply
    • You’re better off. The new app is weak. I very much regret the upgrade.

      Reply
  2. How do I upgrade from the current version of the phone app to the latest version? It is very very frustrating that the app did not upgrade itself.

    Reply
    • It will auto-update when it is release. That will happen at noon PT.

      Reply
      • It is not really a support issue but something to pass along to your marketing team. I received the email about the new version at 5:02am US EDT. But my phone will not actually get the upgrade until 3:00pm US EDT. It seems like marketing is working on EDT while Support is working on PDT. Managing communications and upgrades based on timezones is Customer Services 101, kinda of a simple thing. It should have been better synched.

        Reply
        • Totally in sync. Just a downside of announcing the news on stage at IFA in Berlin. We actually split the timing that way such that customers would have a chance to read the email and about the new release to help from being quite as shocked when the auto-update comes. Hope that helps and thanks for the feedback!

          Reply
  3. don’t see app in apple app store or google play store yet. Probably later today.

    Reply
  4. When will Windows Phone get the updated app or are abandoning the platform?

    Reply
  5. Are Nest Thermostats finally supported?

    Reply
    • Of course not. ST makes a point of pretending that it’s supported as if every customer were a developer.

      Reply
      • Hi Augustine. We certainly understand your frustration and do try and make things as easy as possible. As Alex notes, the current Works with Nest API has some limitations, including on how we can interact with data, that require us to think about what open really means, how your other applications will or will not work with the thermostat in the same way they work with Honeywell, Ecobee, etc. It’s actually because we are trying to make it as simple and consistent as possible.

        Reply
    • Not officially yet. We’re above 200 certified devices now. The breakdown with Nest hasn’t been a technical one, but rather just working to reconcile their approach with our definition of what it means to be an open platform. We are pretty fanatical about that and driving an environment that fosters open innovation and maximum choice for customers. I’m hopeful we can make that happen with Nest before long, but that’s the backstory.

      Reply
  6. Look’s great… But it would be helpful if you integrate the extension to the android wear platform. Right now the only standalone app that supplies this need is Clever Objects, maybe you can contact or hire its developer

    Reply
  7. Like many others commented already here, I would like to know when will windows phone/mobile 10 get updated app? Thanks for supporting windows platform

    Reply
  8. The smart home monitor would be excellent if it were to work with “real” security systems. The Z-Wave sensors are too flaky. My DSC sensors have never had a false alarm, detect when they have been tampered with, have better range and are much more discreet. Lastly, things like drop cams and such are novelties so support for ONVIF would be needed for customers who bypass the novelty and have actual security cameras.

    Reply
  9. Will the new app work in landscape orientation (i.e. for an iPad)?

    Reply
    • I’m sorry to say that it will not. As part of this platform update, we have made the platform more flexible such that we should be able to have an easier time supporting new clients in different form factors in the future, but didn’t focus on a landscape orientation in this release.

      Reply
  10. Must have Windows support, I’ve heavily surrounded my home automation around your products specifically for the Windows support. Would really love a Universal app.

    Reply
  11. So… why is my iPhone app blank, and where’s the new app?

    Reply
  12. Any idea when the new app rolls out? It’s now more than 2 hours past 12PT, but the app store still shows the old version.

    Reply
  13. I like the visual update. The app was far too confusing before.

    But I can’t believe you guys made so many changes and left out the only thing I want from a smarthome platform: scenes.

    I’m astonished by this and don’t understand your thought process behind it. Do you honestly think there’s never a time when your users just want to set a bunch of lights to various dim levels?

    Reply
    • You can do that with Routines. They are scenes+++

      Reply
      • Fair enough, but I’m not optimistic that it’ll work the way I want it to. I just want to be able to tap a button and have all my lights switch to their own dim levels. In the past, I could set up a group of lights and other devices into an executable action, but it would require that all the lights get set to the same dim level, which was dumb.

        I might try Smartthings again, but my last experience left a whole lot to desire.

        It doesn’t help that the buttons for the routines take up an absurd amount of space. What is with Smartthings and Wink, where they insist on using gobs of white space? This is like design 101 stuff here, particularly on small mobile device screens. I currently have about 20 scenes that I use on a day to day basis, and now I’m going to have to have those mixed in with all my automated stuff too? With those gigantic buttons? Yeesh, the more I think about it the less I care if the routines work the way I want them to. The app has gotten a visual upgrade, but there’s still so many glaring mistakes.

        Reply
        • Good feedback. Will think on this. Maybe a routine where you could choose as the action to memorize the current state of a range of lights that you select and then when you tap it it would put them all back into that same state in the future.

          Some cool features coming in an app update next week with the ability to create lighting “Sets” that I think you will like and push in this direction as well.

          Keep the feedback coming!

          Reply
          • When you say lighting sets, will it help my problem here? I just want to group my lights like I do on the switches area, and automate them with various triggers. I love that layout…but I couldn’t control color. Previously I used the Hue smartapps to detect when a switch turned on, then it would intercept and change color.

          • To automate my house, I’d need about 75 entries in this automation app, since you can’t have multiple triggers.

          • I’d really love to see a delay option when you tell an action to take place after motion stops. Currently it is only possible to trigger instantly, but in the Switches section you have more control.

  14. I was really hoping for some room-based logic. By grouping things this way, you could set modes for room by using motion intelligently as a presence detector. It appears the new implementation of rooms it to make it easier to control the rooms, not automate them.

    Reply
  15. So, I updated, opened the app, and seem to be missing the highly advertised Smart Home Monitor. I can’t find it in the marketplace either…

    Did this not make it into the app? I’m running it on Android, if that makes a difference.

    Reply
  16. My biggest concerns with many of the IOT and home security apps is the online security of the applications themselves. How secure are the apps from known or unknown vulnerabilities? What assurance do customers have that a hacker will not gain access and start unlocking doors or turning on appliances? Thank you.

    Reply
    • It’s a fair and reasonable concern Umman. Our general belief is, for the vast majority of households, lack of information and insight into the basic question of ‘is everything okay at home’ is the much bigger risk than the technical risk of the cloud, devices or mobile app. This is definitely in the category of knowledge is power.

      Reply
  17. If you pick a feature device for a room, but you’d like to go back to no feature device, should I be able to? I have yet been able to get it to do it. I select “no feature device”, select done, it shows the future device empty, select done and it goes back to having the feature device again.

    Reply
  18. I’ve installed the new App and it does appear to be more user friendly but now some of the switches don’t show the correct state. 5 of my lights show as being on when, in fact, they’re off. I’ve tried toggling them on and off and they do work but the app always shows them as on. I’ve also rebooted the hub with no effect. Interestingly, they are all in the same room but not all of the lights in the room are this way. The only commonality I can see is that they are all plug in modules (some dimmable and some not). I have a ticket in with Support. Anyone else seeing this behaviour?

    Reply
    • Having the same behavior here. One of my lights seems to be working fine, the other refuses to update. These are GE Dimmer switches, both are the same model switch.

      Reply
      • I’ve done some checking in my IDE and it appears that the switches I’m having difficulty with are not logging their events. They show no events since I upgraded to the new App. I will update support with this info and see what I get back from them. (I have about 20 devices having this issue!)

        Reply
      • So I discovered that if I remove the room that the trouble light is in it works fine. Then I recreated the room and tested and everything is working fine now. Might want to give it a try and see if it helps?

        Reply
        • Do you have to remove the switches as well or just the room? What I mean to say is if you delete the room does that delete the switches?

          Reply
          • I may have spoke too soon. All that did was move the problem. Now my other switch is acting up instead. Even more odd I removed the room, but the switch is still not working correctly now. Also looks like me other switch is having the problem again too… Not sure what’s up.

          • I’m going to see what happens after they fix whatever is causing this major outage. Besides, I’m at work and should be actually working!

          • Per my comment up above, we got to the bottom of a bug today that was resulting in this behavior. Let us know if you’re still having problems, and thanks for your patience and help in getting to the bottom of it!

    • Same issue.

      Reply
    • Evidently the platform outage was resolved, but still my app is more or less a paperweight at this point :( None of my devices are controllable now from the app.

      Reply
    • Weighing in here. We found a pretty bad bug today that was resulting in the majority of these issues. It has been corrected in our production environment already. Let us know if you’re still seeing these problems, and thanks for all the patience and help in sorting it!

      Reply
  19. Can I have the things view back and hide all the other views? Dammt. (I know the answer will be no but then I can always roll back the app)

    Reply
  20. I’m noticing an issue now on your Device List online at https://graph.api.smartthings.com/device/list.

    When I view my device list, I get a DataTables error (attached below). In checking the code, I see you’ve added a new DataTables column called “Group”, but didn’t yet add it to the bootstrap table itself.

    I assume you guys are aware of this issue, but I figured if not, just in case I would let you guys know on here.

    Reply
  21. How do I make the “Smart Home Monitor” go away?

    Reply
  22. This is seriously less useful and harder to read. So much wasted screen space. Nicer looking but as the trend this is far less usable.

    This update is going to be hell having to explain to the family how to drill down just to find the damn light to turn on. What the hell are you guys thinking! Previously I had folders of rooms that fit on one page at a glance and now it scrolls off the screen as you waste almost half the screen.

    I am so glad I saved the apk for the previous version.

    Reply
  23. Could you just make a straight forward remote control app as a secondary option. Stripped down grid of icons that you can keep in rooms and the user can choose what is shown there to remove sensors?

    It would make life easier for many families.

    Reply
  24. I like the new UI but it is still missing a consistent way to reorder. Currently, you can easily reorder items in the Dashboard and in Rooms but not in Things, Smartapps, Family and Routines.

    And I miss a way to quickly access frequently used actions, which I would set as the default start screen in the app (or pin to the start menu of Windows devices) . In our house, family members interact with SmartThings primarily to turn on/off or dim lights and open the garage door. How can I make this instantly accessible instead of having to drill down in the UI?

    Reply
  25. Why did you not add “Proximity Sensors” functionality to “Smart Home Monitor”? In my SmartApp for monitoring my home, I could add both Cell Phones to that app and it would turn off & on my security system depending on our location. I really don’t want to have to push “Arm” or “Disarm” every time! When we go to bed I just pressed “Good Night” and that changed the mode of the house. So for now, I have two apps for basically the same thing. Please fix soon!

    Reply
  26. Also, is there an iPad app available?

    Reply
  27. First, the Dashboard section is completely misleading. ST says that existing users will still see things like Doors and Locks, Lights and Switches, etc. Not so. Once you upgrade to the new hub, which you have to delete all your old SmartApps and devices to complete the migration, all those categories are gone and there is no way to add them back. The Dashboard is now a nearly worthless piece of app real estate. What was once a fantastic at-a-glance status view of my entire system, is now home to Smart Home Monitor only. Such a waste. SmartThings should have been upfront about this – I would have never upgraded my hub if I had know this would happen.

    Second, what use to be the awesome functionality of one-stop rule making has now become an exercise in a million clicks. I used to be able to create a switch for a single light with 2 Cree Connected bulbs. That one switch allowed me to control both bulbs as one fixture; no more. I also used to be able to create a single rule that would turn on the light at sunset and turn off at a particular time. Now I have to create one rule to turn the light on at sunset, and another rule to turn off the light. How ridiculous is that? Same horrible problem with my garage, but worse. I had a single rule that notified me when my garage door opened, when the garage door had been open for longer than 10 minutes, and opened my door when I got home. Now I have a separate rule for the open notification and another in Routines (completely separate section of the app) to open my door when I get home. I still haven’t found how to notify me if the door has been open for more than 10 minutes and I’ve been hunting for a long time. This is awful and ST should be ashamed of this major step backwards in the functionality of their app.

    Reply
    • Completely agree with you. I’m still confused with how this freaking app works after using it for 2 months. ST’s needs to hire some decent designers because the ones they have are pretty much clueless as to making an intuitive application. Of course the problem likely lies with the desire to do things their way regardless of whether or not there’s a standard way to do things that users will understand.

      Reply
  28. This whole thing is over complicated…I can have it unlock a door as I arrive but not re-lock that door X minutes after it unlocks it without going to another persons code. it needs to have more options within the app to set things like unlock then re-lock. Also, why cant we have short cuts on our phones desktop to control things.I dislike having to open the smartthings app and go through 2 or 3 screens to turn a light off.

    Reply
    • Widgets would be really great, but since this seems based off the iPhone app, and secondary to it, we probably won’t see this functionality anytime soon. However, there are other ways to achieve this.

      Reply
  29. Regardless of features, you people at Smart Things need to get your act together on this app. The Android version at least is a big, bloated piece of garbage! The number of times I have to force-quit it during a typical day (on a Samsung device!) is close to double-digits. Seriously, is this the best you all can do?

    Reply
  30. I upgraded my app and find some improvements, some new annoyances are present and some old annoyances remain.

    1. When I get a push notification of an alert it doesn’t close it when pressing the home button, so to get it off my screen I need to click on it.

    2. When I click on it then it doesn’t bring me to the dashboard status page it brings me some page that asks me if I want to set up a device. I don’t, I want to check the alert.

    3. When I dismiss the alert do I really need to confirm it? I don’t think so, at least change the checkbox to “don’t ask me again”.

    All in all this work flow requires way way to many clicks.

    Thanks for your attention,
    Mark

    P.S. My upgrade is to a newer version of the app then is mentioned in this article

    Reply

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