Samsung’s SmartThings platform has taken a giant leap forward

By Patrick Hearn Published July 30, 2025

The Samsung SmartThings platform has typically been a secondary consideration for most smart home users, especially in the face of more advanced options like Amazon Alexa or Google Home. SmartThings has always had a few hidden features that most users overlook, but over the past few months, Samsung has made significant upgrades to the platform that make it worth consideration.

Many of those features unsurprisingly revolve around Galaxy AI. At the summer 2025 Galaxy Unpacked event earlier this month, the company announced a slew of new features that have quietly elevated SmartThings from “that other smart home platform I’ve heard about” to something you should pay serious attention to.

Not current with all the news? Here’s a high-level overview of what’s new.

Smart home tech can be incredibly convenient, but learning exactly how to set up complicated routines and triggers is sometimes outside the scope of a casual user. SmartThings’ Routine Creation Assistant helps you set up powerful, intelligent systems without the need to navigate obtuse menus. All you have to do is ask SmartThings to carry out the action in the app, and it will configure all of the needed actions.

For example, let’s say you want to create a routine that gently wakes you up and has your coffee waiting for you. You can say, “Create a wakeup routine that slow brightens my bedroom lights starting at 6:45 AM and starts brewing coffee at 6:55 AM. At 7 AM, start my morning playlist.” While you could do all of those things before, now you can circumvent the different menus.

This feature also implements SmartThings’ Delay Actions feature, which makes creating staggered commands like the ones above as simple as telling the platform what to do.

It sometimes feels like the convenience of the smart home is largely catered toward single-user households. Setting up routines is simple enough, but setting up a routine with conditional settings (like making sure your spouse is out of the house before the robot vacuum triggers) is a different story.

One of the new features for SmartThings is called Confirm to Run Actions. It essentially adds an additional verification layer by notifying users and confirming actions before starting them, such as ensuring no one is home before arming the security system.

Of all of SmartThings’ latest features, Virtual Home is the one that feels most futuristic. This feature has been around in beta for some time, but it’s not officially live for all users. The Virtual Home feature lets you toy around with different smart home gadgets in a virtual setting so that you can better imagine how they might work and interact with your existing setup.

Virtual Home is accessible through the SmartThings app. You can also access it by going to https://virtual.smartthings.com/, but fair warning: the example page is pretty demanding and might be slow on lower-end machines.

Outside of these three major updates, SmartThings has also received an overhaul to its Apple Watch app that makes it faster to swap between different devices straight from your wrist. It’s a relatively minor upgrade, but the impact is easy to see. You can control things without reaching for your phone.

In addition, the SmartThings Find service is also getting a bit of a makeover with a new feature that makes it easier to have friends and family help you look for lost items. Now all you have to do is send a link, and it can be viewed from any device — including other mobile operating systems like iPhone.

Finally, Samsung is expanding the availability of its Calm Onboarding feature. This makes it easier for users to set up and connect compatible products to the SmartThings app. Currently available in 14 countries, it will be available in 58 by the time the rollout finishes.