5+ Weeks Without SmartThings Presence Detection – Is Mobile Presence Officially Dead?

SmartApps & Automations
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Hi everyone,

I’m Alex – the original poster from this thread about mobile presence suddenly stopping on our Galaxy S22 Ultra.

We’ve now gone over five weeks without SmartThings being able to trigger any presence-based automation. After years of consistent performance, this feature just died, and nothing I’ve done has brought it back.

:cross_mark: Here’s what we’ve tried (spoiler: everything)
:white_check_mark: Reinstalled SmartThings app

:white_check_mark: Cleared cache + wiped phone cache partition

:white_check_mark: Reset permissions (location: always on, precise location on, no battery optimization)

:white_check_mark: Toggled ‘Get location from this phone’ repeatedly

:white_check_mark: Changed geofence radius & map location

:white_check_mark: Deleted and re-added presence devices in SmartThings Advanced Web App

:white_check_mark: Downgraded to older versions of the SmartThings app (1.8.28.21)

:white_check_mark: Tried brand new Samsung account + new phone to isolate the issue

:white_check_mark: Presence still fails on both S22 Ultra and an additional test phone

:white_check_mark: Tried Samsung Find, which does see the phone’s location (but SmartThings doesn’t use it reliably)

:white_check_mark: Created and tested virtual presence sensors (these work with routines manually)

:police_car_light: Current State
presence attribute in the SmartThings Web UI shows as null for both original and new test devices

Routine works only when triggered manually or by using the virtual presence sensor

All phones are running the latest Android & SmartThings versions

SmartThings notification often shows “Updating location info…” indefinitely – this never used to happen

Samsung support has been… let’s just say, unhelpful. I’ve been bounced between TV, soundbar, and washing machine departments :man_facepalming:

:megaphone: Ask to the Community & Samsung Engineers
Can someone from the SmartThings team PLEASE help us understand if:

Mobile presence is broken globally?

This is a backend bug introduced in May?

Is there a fix coming?

Can someone from Samsung acknowledge this and escalate it?

:busts_in_silhouette:Also: Anyone else still affected?
If you’re seeing broken mobile presence on your device(s), PLEASE comment below to get this some visibility. Let’s make some noise so we can get a proper response and a fix!

Thanks to everyone who’s offered support so far — but this is way past the “try rebooting” stage. Hoping someone with technical access sees this :folded_hands:

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I had a similar problem once. It turned out that “use cellular data” was turned off on the phone…

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i wish our issue was that simple. we have tried with 3 different phones on 3 different samsung accounts and also didnt help. An interesting thing was using the samsung family care part of the smartthings app i can get it to announce arrival or departure, but it still wont run any rules either inside the managed places of family care or the main app. its gone nuts.

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I don’t think this is some universal problem. Both of the phones associated with our accounts are accurately showing presence, one an Android phone and the other an iPhone. And if it were a more wide-spread issue, we’d see more people here in the forum talking about it.

  • When you look in the AWA, do your mobile phones show as being associated with a Location?

  • Is the value you indicate as Null the main:presenceSensor:presence capability?

  • Is there any timestamp for the main:presenceSensor:presence capability?

  • If you set up a Linked Place as Graham suggested in the original topic, do you see a new main:presenceSensor:presence capability added to the device in the AWA and if so, does it have a value?

  • Do you only have Galaxy S22 Ultra phones? Do you have access to any other device you could test?

  • When you say you “Deleted and re-added presence devices in SmartThings Advanced Web App”, are you saying you deleted your mobile device in the AWA? (Probably not a good thing to do)

  • For the Location Owner, you should see two devices, one with a Presentation of “Mobile_as_a_thing” and the other as “SmartThings-smartthings-Mobile_Presence”. Do you see that in the AWA?

  • What country are you?

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Hi Bruce, many thanks for the detailed questions. I’ll go through and answer each one below:

When you look in the AWA, do your mobile phones show as being associated with a Location?
Yes, all mobile phones correctly show the “Home” location in the AWA.

Is the value you indicate as Null the main:presenceSensor:presence capability?
Yes — each mobile device has three attributes, and none of them show any values or timestamps. One of the devices was added just yesterday for testing and it’s identical to the two main phones — no data at all.

Is there any timestamp for the main:presenceSensor:presence capability?
No, there are no timestamps on any of the presenceSensor attributes for any device.

If you set up a Linked Place as Graham suggested in the original topic, do you see a new main:presenceSensor:presence capability added to the device in the AWA, and if so, does it have a value?
Each device shows three component IDs. After adding a Linked Place, I believe one of those components corresponds to it — but still, no values or updates appear on any of them.

Do you only have Galaxy S22 Ultra phones? Do you have access to any other device you could test?
We’ve tested with three Galaxy devices: S22 Ultra, S24 Ultra, and S10+. I also have an old iPad (Wi-Fi only, no SIM) which I’ll try using with a mobile hotspot as one of the next tests.

When you say you “Deleted and re-added presence devices in SmartThings Advanced Web App,” are you saying you deleted your mobile device in the AWA?
Yes — I tried this with one of the phones just to see if removing and re-adding it would reset anything. It made no difference. Everything seems so broken at this point that I’m just trying anything.

For the Location Owner, you should see two devices — one with a Presentation of “Mobile_as_a_thing” and the other as “SmartThings-smartthings-Mobile_Presence”. Do you see that in the AWA?
Yes, for each phone under “Presentation ID”, we see:
SmartThings-smartthings-Mobile_Presence
We don’t see “Mobile_as_a_thing” though — only the above.

As background: I originally set up SmartThings while living in the US, but we moved to Thailand in 2015. We brought all our smart home gear with us — much of it Z-Wave on US frequencies, which aren’t readily available here. Back then, we were connected to the US region IDE. When the IDE was retired, there were a few issues, but thankfully some great people from this community and Samsung helped clean it up on the backend.

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Throw one more item out to test. Delete any Routines that use presence and create new ones.

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For me, the thing that is curious is that 1) there isn’t a Mobile_as_a_thing device; and 2) there is never any status change or timestamp on the presenceSensor:presence capability. To me, it suggests the device is not properly represented in the ST cloud and hence the APIs used by the app and AWA don’t get the information required to perform actions.

The OP states that his original account was created in the U.S., but now he is in Thailand. I suppose that could be related. But curiously, even a new account seems to have the same issue(s). At this point, I’d say it could very well be a region specific issue.

@nayelyz Could the Eng team take a look and see if they can determine if something is askew?

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Not for the ‘Location Owner’ but for whoever the user that is logged in to the AWA. It’s a ‘user device’ that exists outside of a ST Location and isn’t visible to other users.

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Ah, I stand corrected. It is still strange that it is missing for the OP.

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Certainly. I also find it strange that the presence attributes are not populated. As it happens I installed a brand Harry Spankers phone this afternoon and it hasn’t left my home, yet it is already showing present for my main geolocation and not present for a linked place.

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Yes, I deleted the old Linked Place for my work location and created a new one just the other day. It was populated almost immediately. This has got to be something to do with the OP’s account or geography that is coming into play here.

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My perspective on what’s going on:

Over the past few years, it looks like Samsung has been actively building out SmartThings infrastructure in Asia, likely in response to the increasing availability of SmartThings-compatible devices in this region. When we first moved here, SmartThings only supported U.S. and European servers. Now, there’s clearly an Asian region as well — which is great in theory.

However, I suspect that as Samsung continues to separate and regionalize backend services, something has gone wrong in one of the recent changes. It feels like a backend issue specific to regional infrastructure — perhaps presence tracking is no longer syncing correctly across the new architecture.

The real problem is that local support teams here don’t seem to have any meaningful knowledge of SmartThings — even though it’s now officially sold in this market. I’ve tried multiple times to get help locally, but they’re unable to assist. Meanwhile, U.S. support tells me I’m not in their region and redirects me back to local support.

It’s a classic catch-22, and unfortunately, I’m stuck in the middle.

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Hi @Alexhp11

Could you enable support access to your account so I can check its details, please?

  1. Confirm the email account registered in the forum is the same one you use for SmartThings. If not, please share it with me over DM.
  2. Enable support access to your account:
  1. Go to the SmartThings Web (my.smartthings.com)
  2. Log in to your Samsung Account
  3. Select Menu (⋮) and choose Settings
  4. Toggle on Account Data Access
  5. Select the time period and confirm - In this step, please select “Until turned off”, once the team finishes, we’ll let you know so you can disable it again.

More info about this access here: https://support.smartthings.com/hc/en-us/articles/36170233944852-Enabling-Account-Data-Access-for-Support

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Hi Itati, i believe that access is already on. please let me know if its not.

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Thanks for the suggestion — just to clarify, is this based on something that has worked for you in the past?

I’ve been trying to avoid deleting all of the non-functioning routines, as I want to keep a few in place in case SmartThings support eventually looks into my account. I did remove most of them, but I’ve kept the specific ones I reported to SmartThings that are still failing with location triggers, just so there’s something visible for them to review.

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Hi @Alexhp11
To help rule out any issues with the link between your mobile device and the SmartThings app, here are some steps recommended by the engineering team that might help re-establish the connection:

  1. Open the Advanced Users app
    Go to Devices and find the record of your phone. The type must be “mobile.”
  2. Disable location sharing
    In the SmartThings app, go to Menu > Settings and turn off “Get your location from this phone.”
  3. Check if the device record was deleted
    Go back to the Advanced Users app and verify if the mobile device record was removed.
  • If not, please delete it manually.
  1. Verify location permissions
    On your mobile device, go to:
    Settings > Apps > App Management > SmartThings > Permissions
    and make sure “Location” is set to “Allow all the time.”
  2. Enable location sharing again
    In the SmartThings app, re-enable the option “Get your location from this phone.”
  3. Collect app logs
    Right after completing the steps, collect the app logs just in case — they are lost after 2 minutes or less.
  4. Note the timestamp
    Write down the exact time you performed the steps. This allows us to pull Cloud logs later if the issue happens again.

Why this is important:
This process creates a fresh “link” between the SmartThings app and your phone’s location data.
According to the engineering team, the app itself is what determines the “present”/“not present” state — so it might not be getting accurate location data unless re-synced.

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Hi i have completed this and sent you a DM.

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Thanks for sharing these steps — I’ve actually gone through this full process before, exactly as outlined, and unfortunately it didn’t resolve the issue.

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My s24 Ultra and daughters s21 Ultra have been experiencing presence issues when the app updated. I downgraded to Version 1.8.29.24 and the phone is instantly detected.

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That’s interesting, i did try that and it didn’t work for me . but the timing of the first time we had issues was during the time of SmartThings 1.8.29.24.