We have completed work to implement regional safeguards in the SmartThings Classic app. Existing users can continue using SmartThings Classic without interruption.
In order to comply with recent changes in South Korea privacy regulations, we are unable to offer the Classic app to new users in South Korea going forward. New users in all other regions can once again sign up for Samsung Accounts and resume using the SmartThings Classic app.
We appreciate your patience as we continue working to meet your expectations for functionality and privacy in the new SmartThings app.
ANNOUNCEMENT
SmartThings is committed to helping turn every home into a smart home. With the help of a lot of great users and a very dedicated community, we’ve seen amazing growth! As we prepare to share SmartThings with more people around the world, we need to make some changes to the platform.
We realize that the SmartThings Classic App provides critical functionality for many of our advanced users. However, SmartThings Classic was only officially launched in North America and the UK, which means some changes are needed in order to comply with rapidly changing global privacy regulations. As part of this effort, we are temporarily limiting new user sign-up in the Classic app while we add some regional safeguards. Existing users can continue using Classic without interruption - and we plan to restore new user sign-up for select countries in the upcoming days.
Looking ahead, the new SmartThings app will be the best way for us to meet your expectations for functionality and privacy. We know that some additional work is needed to make the new app a one-stop shop for our users and have been connecting with members of the community to collect feedback on your favorite features. Stay tuned for upcoming releases, early tester announcements, and more!
until the new app works with voiceover, I can’t use it at all.
until the new app provides the ability to automate unlocking a smart lock, I won’t want to use it. My reason for getting smartthings in the first place 5 years ago was a hands-free method of unlocking the front door. Lack of this functionality in the new app left me completely dependent on the classic app.
8 Likes
RBoy
(www.rboyapps.com - Making SmartThings Easy!)
5
When you say new user sign up, can one sign up using the new app and then use the same login with the Classic app?
The one capability that would need to be integrated into the new app for me to switch entirely over is the ability to use Device Handlers and Smart Apps created using the IDE. Currently, I can only add them using the old app.
Hello. I’ve just joined the Smartthings community, and have made a considerable investment for the Hardware, and now my time in learning how to make it all work together. From what I have seen the new ST Mobile App is VERY limited in both functionality and features. I’ve already switched to
ST Classic to simply receive SMS alerts. This is very basic and it was not in the new Samsung App.
I truly hope ST and Samsung are evaluating their migration steps very carefully. I am already beginning to fear that I may have chosen the wrong platform and investments.
Dumbing a system down and removing functionality is not exactly a visionary approach to product development and migration.
To follow up on my prior post on this topic, is there a plan to sunset/retire the classic app, forcing us to use the new Samsung app? As a lifetime IT professional, I suspect that it is highly unlikely that Samsung will continue to develop and support two applications. This really raises a large concern on my part that I joined the ST platform at a bad time. Albeit I’m new, but with a fresh set of eyes, my instincts tell me that Samsung will retire the classic app, and force all users to the new Samsung app with less functionality and features. This makes development and overall support of their product easier (less costly). It may just end up being a canned product with minimal development or customizations allowed. Thoughts? I only have a few days to return my ST devices…
When they released the new V3 app last year, they officially announced that they would be retiring the V2 classic app, but without a specific timeline since there were still features they were intending to add to the new app.
The real question is why has it taken so long? When they introduced the V2 app as the new app, the V1 app went away immediately, even though it, too, had some missing features such as lighting groups and Authorizing secondary users.
Speculation (but just speculation) is that the V3 app was pushed out to go with Bixby and to Restore integration with Samsung’s very expensive high-end televisions. You can see lots of conversations about this in the forum from last year.
SmartThings is in the middle of a major transition: new hub, new app, new cloud platform. As customers, it’s very difficult for us to predict where this will go.
There’s an active discussion in the developer section of the forum which has been going on for a year about where things may end up. Some staff participation there. But very little is known for sure.
Whether what it will end up being will be something that works for you Specifically is impossible to say, but the people in that developer thread may be able to help you with some educated guesses. .
There are plenty of missing features to the new Samsung Connect mobile app. A couple standouts that spring to mind for me are
a lack of access to all device / some app preference settings, even those that are not using community-written custom device handlers / app code.
no support for community-written custom device handlers / app code, and although the new developer portal now includes support/documentation for hub-connected devices, integration of those devices for use with the new mobile app by community developers is blocked as Samsung now requires developer enrollment by a member/staff/official representative of the manufacturer of the device:
To integrate a hub-connected device, you need a SmartThings-compatible hub and to be enrolled as an organization member in Developer Workspace.
“Organization member” as defined by Samsung/Smartthings:
Enter as an authorized company representative, executive, or project manager, or person with legal authority to enroll your company as an organization. After enrolling your company, your team members can enroll as an Existing Organization using your Manufacturer ID.
Given even the two above missing features, when the “classic” mobile app is no longer supported / no longer working, I will be dropping my hub into the garbage.
It looks like this is being worked on. There was a series of PR recently to simplify the text around settings to they could be translated to multiple languages (remember the new app is available globally and has to support many languages for every item implemented)
Kinda sorta, not really. Developer enrollment as a company is required only if you want to publish your handler publicly to the mobile app so that it shows up in the new app under your brand. IMO this is a good thing. It allows companies a quicker way to get their hub connected devices publicly supported in the app. I believe Megaman just used this method pretty quickly for their zigbee bulbs. The instructions for the new dev portal actually tell you to submit from the Groovy IDE, so it seems that is still the official way to develop a DTH and not going away soon. Privateers can still write their own DTH or copy/paste all they want, too.
Fair enough, but I still don’t see any proper documentation on what “hooks” need to be added in order to get custom code device handlers working properly in the new mobile app. Everything I have tried in the device handlers I maintain, based on what people have shared here in the forums from scant clues in GitHub/smartThingPublic have failed miserably. Frankly without true support, I’m wasting my time and tell users that those device handlers won’t be supported for use with the new app. What I gather from all of the new developer documentation is that the only route to get device handlers presenting properly in the new app is with an enrolled organization member account.
Until that kind of documentation is shared with the public, then custom code device handlers / smart apps will continue to be a real mess in the new Samsung Connect mobile app. I can even begin to express how frustrating, annoying, and mostly useless the new app is to me because of this.
I will gladly welcome responses from any SmartThings staff to counter what I’ve just said here!
Totally agree with this. There needs to be some kind of documentation on wtf VID and OCF do, which values are available for those and what capability set each supports.
1 Like
RBoy
(www.rboyapps.com - Making SmartThings Easy!)
15
I agree with this. It will be another google just controlling all aspects with poor customer support as they won’t be cable to handle the backlash not to mention collection of data.
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