Removal of Smartapps always has to be by emailing support?

[4loveofpunk (Johnny)]

I’m fairly new to the smartthings platform and was well aware there was a bit of a learning curve. Also fairly new to home automation so the first one I tried was Wink because I guess their marketing worked at the time. This has nothing to do with what my issue is as much as give a basis to my level of experience. It’s fairly minimal but I consider myself a pretty “techie” person considering my job is System Admin and I know my way around many scripts.

My issue is this though. Every time a Smartapp has an issue on my hub, I can’t seem to do anything to remedy the issue myself. I read all over the forum for tips and tricks to finagle a smartapp removal and low and behold, it’s like they’re locked somehow to my hub (even after I’ve removed all associated devices) saying “This SmartApp can’t be deleted at this time because it is installed by one or more users” or something close to this type of message. I’ve had this issue with a couple different apps and the interesting part is I’m not wanting to remove them as much as fix them due to something disappearing (all my harmony hub activities) or some other scenario that just seems to only have a reinstall as a solution.

I guess my biggest issue is that I don’t want to write someone and wait for something that seemingly should be able to be removed, dealt with and fixed on my own. So my question is this. Is this normal?

I love the fact that I think Smartthings has more possibilities for integration and growth (not to mention the community is amazing) but these types of things are a bit frustrating.

I also wish there were some video starter tutorials for things like buttons or something along those lines. Even though I feel like I have a pretty good grasp of most of the ideals, I still after a few weeks have probably not cracked half the things smartthings can do. Anyone else feel like they get lost in doing some of the simpler stuff, like even creating buttons, the verbiage, basic concepts?

If I’m alone, take it easy on me. I’m trying to not be the complainer as much as reaching out to the community to get a little guidance on getting a better start. Maybe if I had that down I wouldn’t have to write support as much to fix issues

[JDRoberts]

I guess my biggest issue is that I don’t want to write someone and wait for something that seemingly should be able to be removed, dealt with and fixed on my own. So my question is this. Is this normal?

It’s not normal in the sense that it’s not supposed to work that way and it often does work the way it’s supposed to (how’s that for verbiage!), But it’s not uncommon either.

There’ve been times in the past when it was rare to need to ask support for help with removing a device/smartapp, so we can only hope to get back to that in the future.

As far as virtual switches, try this FAQ:

FAQ: Creating a virtual Device

Need a FAQ for the simplest version of this: a virtual on/off switch. Maybe even two FAQs, one for why you would want one with use case examples and one step by step how to for creating one in ST. Thanks!

Feel free to ask any follow-up questions there, or in the developers subsection of the forum where there are a lot of very helpful people:

https://community.smartthings.com/c/developers

This might also help with concepts:

FAQ: An Overview of Using Custom Code in SmartThings

So you're new to SmartThings, you asked a question, and someone suggested "custom code" as an answer. Or you were browsing the forums, and you found something that sounded like it would be perfect for what you wanted, but again, "uses custom code." What does that mean, how hard is it to do, and what's the difference between a "SmartApp" and a "Device Type Handler"? (Note: the official terminology has changed a couple of times. "device type handler," "device handler," "DTH," and "device type" all mean the same thing, and you will find all these terms used in the forums.) SECTION I: SMARTAPPS AND DEVICE HANDLERS: WHAT THEY ARE SmartAPPS: Tiny Programs to decide what a specific device should do when, or to collect the information from a specific device SmartApps, including the var…

[JDRoberts]

And the following FAQ used to be very popular but isn’t used much anymore now that most techie people jump right into Rule Machine. But since you mentioned wanting to know more about terminology in use in the forums, this might be a good way to learn more about that:

A Short Intro to Scheduling/Device Control/Rules in SmartThings

You’ve got your hub. You’ve got some devices. Now how do you schedule what happens when? SmartThings doesn’t have a rules engine/scheduler, so there’s no one tutorial for how to do this. But it’s an open platform, and there are about 12 different ways to set up various kinds of schedules. Some require custom code, some don’t. A “scheduler” in this context is anything that causes a networked device to perform an action, even if it’s just to toggle on or off immediately. (Network engineering definition, forgive me. :blush:) (Note: as of April 2017, the original author of this FAQ lost the ability to add updated screenshots as VoiceOver capability was broken in the official SmartThings mobile app and has not yet been fixed. Anyone who wants to update the screenshots or any out of date i…

[4loveofpunk (Johnny)]

ALL OF THIS is exactly what steered me toward smartthings. There IS in fact a ton of information out there about this community and I know in the long run I’ll end up with the automation I want in my home.

I will check out all this reading tonight and thank you so much for being one of the reasons this is such a great community.

I’ll have to admit, some of the troubles I’m having could really be from experimenting so much when I first got the hub. I installed, uninstalled, played around because that’s generally how I learn best. Trial by fire kind of scenario, but I’ve learned fairly quickly this isn’t necessarily the best way to go about smartthings.

I have a feeling by next year I’ll be tackling my own smartapps, thanks for being supportive in my journey to get there

[Entityxenon (Jake)]

it’s like they’re locked somehow to my hub (even after I’ve removed all associated devices) saying “This SmartApp can’t be deleted at this time because it is installed by one or more users” or something close to this type of message.

Go to the Smart Apps screen in IDE, then on the right hand side under location, make sure there is not a location listed, if it is then remove it, this has solved this issue every time I have had it…