Samsung has apparently discontinued SmartThings support for its own TVs, according to a recent community post by a Samsung Moderator answering a question regarding the service’s availability. No explanation was given as to why the feature has been disabled but the functionality will not be coming back, according to the same source. As a result, Samsung smart TV owners are no longer able to control their TV sets using the SmartThings platform.

The SmartThings company was founded in 2012 and acquired by Samsung two years later, with the tech giant planning to use it as its Internet of Things platform of choice, prior to the OEM announcing its SmartThings application in September 2015. The system allows users to control connected home appliances and smart devices through a smartphone hub application, and last year, the SmartThings Hub was updated to support Samsung TVs, allowing users to control their compatible TV sets remotely through their handsets. However, this functionality has now been removed from the platform, as recently confirmed by a moderator on the official Samsung Community pages. Unfortunately, no additional information was provided as to why support has been pulled, but the moderator reaffirms that the SmartThings Hub itself has not been discontinued; only its TV functionality was removed.

Also worth noting is that it’s not entirely clear when this change actually happened, as according to the original poster on the Samsung Community website, SmartThings integration has been unusable on the Samsung un55ks8500 2016 TV model since a firmware update was pushed to the device in September. Four additional firmware updates were sent to the TV over the past few months, but none of them addressed the problem that ultimately ended up being a conscious decision on Samsung's part. The only addressing that was made came in the form of the recent confirmation that the functionality has been disabled, with the firm's community manager being unwilling to speculate on whether or not the feature will make a comeback in a different form or through another application in the future. As an alternative, Samsung TV owners can utilize Samsung Connect instead which is now advertised as the primary method of linking one's device with a Samsung-made television set.