It just seems like something that would be insanely useful to have an option when removing a device that would remove the device from all smart apps in one button push. I can’t tell you how many times I have gone to remove something and had it be within Alexa, security monitor, and like 6 other smartapps that i have to dig through the settings and remove it from. I can’t be alone in this issue.
Because some apps like Smart Lights, RM, CoRE, etc. use the devices for more or less complex conditions. What should happen there if the device simply “disappears”?
the feature is good to prevent shared smart app get removed accidentally, like those have more than 1 device tie to it.
Nothing extraordinary. The app should stop receiving events from the device. Sending commands to the removed device should take no effect (essentially resolve to no-op). 
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I definitely agree!
I’ve felt this way, like, forever. A very common reason to remove a device is to replace it; sometimes even replacing it with the exact same physical device because you or support suspects an issue and this resets it to the right DTH and so on.
By leaving some sort of reference / place-holder in the SmartApp for the removed device, it’s much easier to add it or replacement back in; since it wouldn’t be less necessary to remove and reinstall entire SmartApps in many scenarios.
And I said it a few dozen times: This type of function, while not absolutely “trivial”, can be figured out, and is a key component in any sort of Hub Migration Tool.
But if I had:
Door is open
AND
John is present
And you remove the door, how do I then evaluate that condition? Is the door open? Is it closed? Do I assume a false at all times? Would that rule fail from now on?
I would also love to not have to go and change all smartapps to remove one device, but it’s not always that easy to habdle such device removals.
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I’ve had to remove devices that need to be reinstalled. Each time I had to remove it from all its associated apps. It’s a hassle and I’m not even running a complex system like many here are.
It would be nice to have a button that would remove all associated apps and routines from a device with one click. To prevent accidental removal of devices, a second click asking for verification of removal could also be there.
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I think it would be reasonable for the SmartApp to be suspended from executing if Devices are missing; i.e., it would be like a SmartApp that is set to run only in certain Modes, in this case, it wouldn’t run in any Mode until the device is replaced.
There are definitely UI considerations. The removed device could be magically turned into some sort of “Placeholder Device Type”, which, say, for a Contact Sensor, could have a preference option to be marked as “always closed, always open, or always suspended”.
Gotta think outside the box!!! 
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We’re barking up the wrong tree 
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So it turns out that running a general exclusion, it removes the device from your system. But I can tell you, that is no fun! The device is removed from all apps, but is a royal pain to replace it, and it looks like it corrupts the app.
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Yah… SmartApps are definitely not designed to accommodate brute-force device removal. This is a feature that needs to be re-designed-in as an enhancement … can’t be “hacked-in”.
I don’t recall that in the past we were able to run an exclusion on a device and that would remove it from the system. It was (bad) news to me when it actually happened, just like two weeks ago when the replace actually did it on its own. Just recovered from that mess. @johnconstantelo , did you stumble on this before?
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I can’t say for sure because of how my devices were removed with what I just went through. The Minimote was the culprit for me, and it did not pass back to ST that it deleted the device. ST just saw it as REMOVED, which in turn messed up some of my smartapps using that device. Since it wasn’t deleted or excluded by ST, supported was needed to help mop up the mess.
I haven’t brute force deleted a device in a while because I’ve been using the Replace (zwave only) feature. Before that came along, exclusion or brute force deletion was the only way to get a device back again.
Yup, same here, but either there is something wrong with Aeon motion sensors, or the replace doesn’t work as it used to, for 2 weeks. After several failures to replace my new sensor that was stuck on motion, I decided to try exclusion. I seem to remember that I have done this before, and still had to go in and unhook the device from each app and then manually remove it from the system. This time as soon as the device was excluded, it was automatically removed from the system, corrupting every app that was using it. Very frustrating.