Anyone else like me not crazy about the latest App update? I liked the old Things section where all the devices were little boxes. Am I missing something or did they do away with that?
The grid view of devices has gone.
The closest you can get now is the list view of things in the Things tab (second option from the left at the very bottom of the screen).
If you’ve grouped your things into rooms, then you’ll have to go to each room to see the list for that room. If you wanted, you could either not group them or, alternatively, group them all into a single “room”. All your things would then be in a single list - but, granted, not as compact as the old grid view (but then again, you no longer need to shake your device to see the names of your things
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All in all, I quite like the new app so far.
Thanks for the reply. I did group everything into rooms but honestly I really liked viewing the entire grid quickly to see if all lights are off, all doors closed, etc. I find it hard to believe they didn’t leave this as an option?! Oh well.
I actually like the new design. It needs some tweaking, but overall I think it is an improvement. I like the bottom navigation bar, which removes a lot of back and forth nonsense that was present in the previous version. I also like the categorization they chose.
What I don’t like is the wasted space in the home view; the large header should scroll up and out of the way to present more list items.
The touch targets in Routines are comically large, and should be reduced to show at least eight Routines before scrolling is necessary.
The Dashboard is, of course, inexplicably bare, but I am willing to bet more entities for this part of the interface are coming, all with more functionality than we were used to with the old dashboard.
I like the room approach, but it would be nice to see devices able to be assigned to more than one room.
But all in all, I’m happy with it, and find it more comfortable and intuitive. Does it need to get better? Yes, and I think it will.
Not a fan of the list view. I do get that it’ll take some getting used too, but I had some “quick access” things un-grouped, at the top of the Things grid so I could get at 'em fast if I needed to. For example: My Garage door. I have a 15-minute delay on my garage door auto open. I need to be gone 15 minutes before the door will auto-open when I arrive. This reduces the chance of my door opening if my battery starts to run low or if communication between sensor and hub fails for some other reason.
But if I make a quick trip (like, run out to get pizza right now the street) my door won’t auto open so I just pull out my phone, open the app, flip to things and hit the button.
Now I need to open the app, flip to things, scroll to the right room, then scroll to the right thing, then, tap. Yeah… not a huge extra amount of work, but the lack of customization in the things view is a bit annoying.
Yes… but either app wasn’t particularly good at control of things. You could set up a routine to do it it and use the widget… then you wouldn’t even need to launch the app.
It would be nice to see independent, icon size widgets for these kinds of things. I actually have a number of Tasker created widgets that call HAM Bridge for things I need instant access to. It would be even nicer if SmartThings would create a plugin for Tasker. IIRC, one fellow here has created something similar.
True enough Scott. ST idea was always home automation, not home remote control.
I do have tasker tasks setup and even have 'em on my Android Wear, so really pulling out the app is the third step is my tasker items aren’t firing from my watch.
This is what I was trying to recall above…
I agree, it will take some getting used to – but I think the new UI will scale better for high device count setups (with the “room” grouping concept).
I’d recommend taking a look at the SmartTiles dashboard app, I wasn’t using it until the SmartThings 2.0 app release. It provides a grid view of all of your things.
Yes it does. But the new app is much better for installs with > 60 devices. If you use it when you tear down/rebuild your install with your nifty new 2.0 hub, by the time you’re finished you’ll be completely comfortable with it
How do I turn low battery notification on?