It’s very easy for a smart home setup to feel more complicated than it’s worth. All those individual settings, the convoluted routines, and just the sheer amount of time it takes to get things right. Samsung SmartThings is looking to change that.

One of the biggest hurdles for anyone diving into home automation can be the complexity of setting everything up. Samsung’s latest SmartThings update tackles this with something called “Routine Creation Assistant.” It allows you to type out what you want your home to do, like “turn off the living room lights at 11:30 every night,” and SmartThings will handle all the configuration. Unlike similar Google and Amazon, which are still in beta, Samsung’s Routine Creation Assistant is available now for users in Korea and the U.S. on both Android and iPhone.

SmartThings routines are also getting an updated “Delay Actions” feature, letting you schedule multiple timed steps. This was possible before, but it’s a little easier to do now. For example, I use it to automatically turn off my window AC unit 10 minutes after it turns on, but it can do much more elaborate strings of tasks. This handy feature is available in the SmartThings app right now. There’s also a new “Confirm to Run Actions” feature, which just adds an extra notification to prevent accidental routine triggers.

Your Apple Watch is getting some love, too. The SmartThings app for Apple Watch now has a new widget for quicker device control, and you can even switch between locations and control individual devices directly from your wrist. This makes quick actions like unlocking a door or turning on lights while moving around your home much easier without needing to pull out your phone.

And that’s not all. If you’ve ever been curious about smart home tech but hesitated to dive in, Samsung’s “Virtual Home” feature should be useful. This lets you play around with a smart home setup without actually owning any devices, giving you a peek into how SmartThings could work in your space or how adding new devices could improve your routines. You can access Virtual Home in the SmartThings app right now.

Finally, finding lost items is also getting an upgrade with SmartThings Find’s new URL-sharing option. Now, you can share the location of a Galaxy SmartTag with anyone via a simple URL, which can be opened on any device, whether that’s an iPhone, a computer, or another Galaxy device.

All in all, these are some very nice updates for the SmartThings ecosystem. I’ve been a SmartThings user for many years, and I’m excited to give this stuff a try.

Source: SmartThings 1, 2

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