SmartThings

Review by eFreeware

Most smart home apps ask you to commit to one brand's ecosystem. SmartThings takes the opposite approach: it is built to gather devices from hundreds of smart home brands into a single place, so a Samsung TV, a smart speaker and gear from names like Ring, Nest and Philips Hue can all be managed from one screen. That breadth is the most distinctive thing about it, and it is why the app has reached more than a billion installs and holds a 4.6 average across over five million ratings.

It is a free app from Samsung Electronics with no ads and no in-app purchases, which matters in a category where subscriptions and upsells are common. The people who will get the most from it are households that already own several connected devices and want to check on them, run them on schedules and let other family members share control without juggling a separate app for every brand.

I'd treat it as infrastructure rather than a novelty. The appeal is not one clever feature but the idea that your lights, appliances and speakers answer to one app, one routine and one set of notifications, whether you are at home or away.

One screen for a mixed-brand home

The core job is straightforward: connect, monitor and control multiple smart home devices from one app. Samsung's own hardware is covered, including smart TVs, smart appliances and smart speakers, and the app also works with devices from hundreds of other brands. If your home has grown one gadget at a time, this is the argument for consolidating them.

Control is not limited to the room you are standing in. The app is meant to keep you in touch with your home from any location, so a forgotten appliance or a question about what is going on there can be settled with a phone. Notifications work the same way: you get status updates about your devices automatically, without having to open the app and hunt for them.

The recent update touches this part of the app directly. The Home tab has been redesigned so the features and information you use most sit on the main screen, and the developer says devices linked to a hub react more quickly when both the phone and the hub share the same Wi-Fi network. There is also a dedicated screen for checking and recovering offline devices, which is the kind of housekeeping tool a larger setup eventually needs.

Routines that run without you

The feature I find most interesting is routines. You can build them around the time of day, the weather or the current status of a device, so the home carries on doing sensible things in the background rather than waiting for you to tap a button. A routine tied to device status can react to what is actually happening, while one tied to time or weather can anticipate it.

Samsung's latest release adds Routine Insights, which surfaces your three most-used routines along with recent activity. For anyone who has built up a handful of automations and lost track of which ones are doing the work, that is a useful piece of feedback rather than another thing to configure.

Automation is where a mixed-brand setup earns its keep. The more devices you bring in, the more a single well-built routine can replace a series of manual checks, and the app is designed to run those routines quietly in the background.

Sharing the controls with other people

Smart home apps often assume one person holds the keys. SmartThings allows shared control, so you can give other users access to the setup. In a household where more than one person wants to adjust the lights or check an appliance, that turns the app from a personal remote into something the whole home can use.

Notifications and monitoring support that shared model. Status updates arrive automatically, so the person who is not holding the phone still knows what a device is doing. Combined with routines, this means a household can agree on how the home should behave and let the app carry it out.

The permission list reflects how much of the phone the app can draw on. Location data helps the app detect devices, create routines tied to where you are, and find nearby devices over Wi-Fi. Nearby devices covers Bluetooth scanning on Android 12 and later, notifications handle device alerts, and the camera scans QR codes when adding members or devices. The microphone helps add certain devices using high-frequency sounds, while files, photos, music, phone, contacts and physical activity permissions support narrower jobs like playing media on devices, making calls on smart speakers, sending text notifications and detecting when a pet walk starts. Declining the optional permissions still lets you use the app, but some features will not work fully.

Voice control and the watch on your wrist

Voice assistants are supported, with Alexa, Bixby and Google Assistant all able to control smart devices. If you already speak to a speaker in the kitchen or a phone in your hand, the app fits into that habit rather than asking you to learn a new one.

There is also a Wear OS version. It installs on Wear OS-based watches and gives quick access to running a routine or controlling a device by adding a SmartThings tile to the watch. Complications are provided as well, so you can open the app straight from a watch face.

One condition applies: the Wear OS app requires a paired mobile phone to work. It is an extension of the phone app rather than a standalone controller, which is worth knowing before you plan around it.

What you need before installing

The requirements are modest but real. Devices need at least 3GB of memory, and some mobile devices are not supported at all. The app is optimized for Samsung smartphones, and some features may be limited when it is used with phones from other vendors. Availability also varies by country, since some features are not offered everywhere.

The app expects to be given access to your devices and, if you allow it, to your location and nearby-device radios so it can find them. The QR scanning and high-frequency sound options exist to make adding members and certain devices easier.

The app was released in April 2017 and was last updated in September 2026, so this is a long-running product rather than a new experiment. The most recent changes are practical ones: the redesigned Home tab, faster hub-connected device control on the same Wi-Fi, offline device diagnostics and Routine Insights.

A fit for Samsung households with a mix of gear

The clearest audience is a home with Samsung hardware at its center and a mix of other brands around it.

A second group is anyone who has accumulated devices from several brands and wants routines, notifications and shared control in one place. The app is free and carries no ads or in-app purchases, so the cost of trying it is your time and the permissions you choose to grant.

The caveats are worth weighing honestly. Phones from other manufacturers may see some features limited, certain features are unavailable in some countries, and older or low-memory devices may not be supported. For a household already inside Samsung's world, those are small trade-offs against the convenience of a single control point.

A sensible hub app for a multi-brand home

SmartThings does one job well: it pulls smart home devices from many brands into one app, then layers routines, notifications, shared access and voice control on top. The free price, the absence of ads and purchases, and the scale of the install base all point to a mature, widely used tool rather than a niche experiment.

I would recommend it to Samsung households and to anyone whose smart home has outgrown a single brand's app. The requirements are worth checking first: 3GB of memory, a supported phone, and a willingness to grant the optional permissions that make device discovery and routines work. If your setup is small and single-brand, the case is weaker, but for a mixed home this is the app that ties it together.

What's new

SmartThings is getting even better. - Redesigned Home tab: Access your most-used features and key info right from the Home screen. - Faster hub-connected device control: Devices connected to your hub respond faster when your phone and hub are on the same Wi-Fi. - Offline device diagnostics: Check and recover offline devices from one dedicated screen. - Routine Insights: See your top 3 most-used Routines and recent activity.