Samsung has updated SmartThings with a redesigned Home tab, context-based suggestions and controls that can work locally between a phone and a compatible hub. The practical draw is a more responsive smart home, including when the internet connection wobbles.
Watch Desk analysis
What happened
The update introduces SmartThings Now, which puts information and suggested actions into cards at the top of the Home tab. Samsung gives examples including a prompt to check in when a Family Care member has shown no device activity for an extended period, and suggestions to switch on lights or air purifiers as someone approaches home.
The app can also suggest changes to Home tab favourites based on the previous week’s activity. Samsung says the refreshed experience is available across supported devices including phones, TVs, Family Hub refrigerators and Windows devices.
A more substantial change sits underneath the interface: when a phone and compatible SmartThings hub share a Wi-Fi network, the phone can communicate directly with the hub instead of routing controls through the cloud. Samsung says this can improve response times by about 30 per cent in its controlled tests. The company says SmartThings switches between local control at home and cloud-based remote control when users are away.
The update also adds Matter 1.6 support and four device categories: energy meters, closures such as doors and gates, irrigation devices and soil sensors. Samsung says an updated offline-device diagnostics page can apply new network information across registered devices at once.
Why it matters
A smarter home is only useful if it remains responsive when the network is having a small existential crisis. Local control gives compatible devices a route that does not depend on sending every command out to the internet and back. Samsung’s 30 per cent figure is its own test result, not a guarantee for every household, but the underlying change has a clear practical purpose.
The suggestions could also make existing features easier to find and use. They involve personal context, such as location and device activity, so users may reasonably want to know what is being used to generate them and how much control they have over the prompts.
Our read
This is more than a fresh coat of paint: the local-control change and broader Matter support could matter day to day, while SmartThings Now tries to make a crowded smart-home app less of a scavenger hunt. Check device and hub compatibility before expecting every feature to appear. Context-aware suggestions are useful when they save a step, not when the house starts behaving like an over-eager concierge.
What to watch
- Which SmartThings devices and hubs support local control in practice.
- Whether Samsung’s response-time improvement holds up across different home networks.
- How useful the new suggestions prove, and how easily users can manage them.
Discussion spark: Would you rather have a smart home suggest actions based on your routines, or keep every decision manual even if it means more tapping?
Sources and evidence
- Samsung Introduces ‘SmartThings Now’ in New Platform Update That Brings More Intuitive User Experiences (6 October 2026, 08:00 UTC)
- Samsung Art Store Expands Its Collection With 30 Exclusive Works From the British Museum (6 October 2026, 08:00 UTC)
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