Samsung SmartThings is one of the oldest smart home platforms still actively supported, as it was originally founded in 2012 before being acquired by Samsung in 2014. SmartThings isn't just the management/setup tool for Samsung's own connected products — it can connect to thousands of other platforms, just like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. Managing everything you've connected to SmartThings is currently only possible through the Android and iOS mobile apps, but now Samsung is finally building a way to access SmartThings devices through a web browser.

Samsung started development on a web panel for SmartThings in May 2019, though the closed alpha was shut down in October of that same year while Samsung prepared "for a much larger test leading to a full release." According to later forum posts from a SmartThings developer, the web app was still in development, but the project was "running into shifting requirements from legal and security teams." The panel appears to have gone live for anyone with a Samsung account earlier this week, accessible from my.smartthings.com, though the developer noted that it's still not finished and no official support is available.

Once you log in to the SmartThings web dashboard with your Samsung account, you're greeted with the main screen that lists your favorite devices — these don't sync with the mobile app yet, but they will at some point. There's also a tab that displays all your rooms and the devices in each one, as well as an 'Automations' page that shows your smart home scenes and active third-party connections.

All of your connected devices should be listed, though not all of them can be controlled through the web app yet. For example, there are no controls at all for my Samsung smart TV, even though the mobile app lets me to power it on/off, change channels, and open apps. My Galaxy SmartTag isn't supported at all (yet), but my Kasa smart lights work perfectly.

It would be great to see Samsung continue to develop the SmartThings web panel to have as much functionality as the mobile apps. The panel works well on both desktop and mobile, and unlike many other modern web apps, it isn't slow to open. Google and Amazon don't have a similar web panel for their smart home ecosystems (except the basic Alexa web app for connecting/disconnecting third-party services), so Samsung is alone in expanding access to the web.

Samsung previously offered a Windows application for managing SmartThings, but it was deprecated in 2019. The company is now working on an updated desktop application, primarily designed for its new Galaxy Book Pro laptops.