Important:Presence sensing can automatically switch your camera on or off. This happens only if your phone has location sharing turned on .
Your Google Nest camera or doorbell automatically uses your phone’s location. This turns your camera on or off when you leave or come back home using presence sensing . You don’t have to set a schedule or manually turn the camera on or off.
For your camera, including the camera on your doorbell, to automatically turn the camera on and off, the following must be true:
- Your camera or doorbell has to be set up with either presence sensing settings in the Google Home app
or Home/Away Assist in the Nest app
.
-
Nest cameras that you set up in the Home app :Can only be set up with presence sensing in the Google Home app.
- Open the Google Home app
.
- Tap Home
All devices
, then tap or touch or hold your device's tile.
- Tap Settings
.
- Tap Automatic on/off
.
- Optional: If this is the first time to set up the feature, tap Setup presence sensing.
- Open the Google Home app
- Nest cameras that you set up in the Nest app :Can be set up with either presence sensing settings in the Google Home app, which requires you to use a Google Account with your Nest devices and services, or Home/Away Assist in the Nest app.
-
Nest cameras that you set up in the Home app :Can only be set up with presence sensing in the Google Home app.
Important things to know about camera behavior
- Your camera only uses household member phone location to automatically adjust to presence changes. Other Nest products use both phone location and sensor data.
- For the camera stream to switch on or off automatically, people with shared access to your home must have their phones opted-in to presence sensing when they leave or come home.
- The camera switches on when everyone with shared access leaves with their phone. This is Away mode.
- The camera switches off when the first person comes back home. This is Home mode.
- For security reasons, your camera won’t automatically switch off if other Nest products detect activity in your home. This is because the other Nest products can’t tell if the activity is from you or not.
- When you leave, there can be a short delay before your camera automatically switches on. It can also switch off a little before you walk in the door.
- When your camera switches to Home mode or is turned off manually, the video stream stops. However, your camera remains powered so that you can still control it in the app.
- If you create your own automations (using the new editor
or script editor
) that use both presence sensing ("someone's home" or "everyone's away") and camera actions (turning them on or off), they might conflict or override with each other, leading to unexpected behavior. For the most consistent and accurate results, we recommend using
Automatic on/off
Tip:To use presence sensing with your Nest devices, you must use a Google Account to access your home, and use the Google Home app. For more information, go to FAQs about accounts for the Nest app .
Important:Your phone needs to have presence sensing set up and be with you for your Nest camera to automatically detect whether you’re home or away. For example, if you forget your phone at home, your camera doesn’t turn on automatically because it thinks you’re still there.
When you’re away:Your camera uses your phone’s location to know when you’re away, which then activates the video stream.
If your camera senses activity while you’re away, it can notify you, especially if it spots a person .
When you’re home:Your camera automatically turns off its video stream, so it won't notify you of your own activity at home. The decreased load on your internet connection also opens more bandwidth for other activities, like streaming movies or online games. Learn more about internet bandwidth and speed requirements for Nest Cameras .
The table below summarizes what your camera does when you’re at home with your phone or when you leave with it.
| Home |
Away |
|
|---|---|---|
| Video stream |
Off |
On |
| Activity alerts |
Off |
On |
| Video history recorded to cloud (Available with a Google Home Premium subscription ) |
Off |
On |
| Camera power (for Wi-Fi connection) |
On |
On |
Important:Every person must use their own account on their phone when they share access to your connected home. Issues for automatic switching can occur when two or more phones have the same account. For example, your camera might not correctly detect when a person is gone or at home. This is because the same account has two phone locations, one at home and the other away from home.
If more than one person shares access to your home, your camera starts to video stream only when everyone’s phone is out of the home. This means the camera turns on the video stream when the last person has left. It also turns off the video stream when the first person comes home.
To allow the camera to tell when people are home or away, everyone with shared home access needs to be signed in on their phone.
Automatic, schedule, or always on
If you have multiple cameras, you have the choice to:
- Automatically turn off the stream when you come and go
- Set a schedule
- Keep the video stream on all the time for each camera in your home.
For example, you can have your outdoor cameras or video doorbell stay on all the time. This is so you can screen visitors at the front door or get an alert if someone goes into your backyard. Meanwhile, you can have your kitchen camera set to automatically stream video while you’re away and stop the video stream once you come home.
Alert settings
For each camera, you can choose to receive activity notifications either all the time or only when no one’s home. Each person with shared access can also set their own preferences for when they want to receive notifications on their phone.
For example, instead of automatically turning your camera on and off, you can set it to be on all the time. You can also set notifications to send to your phone only when no one’s home. Your camera stays on and only sends alerts when you and anyone with shared access has left home.
Go to app settings for your home to turn automatic switching your camera on or off . Anyone else who can access your devices can do this too.
Tip:If you turn off phone location sharing for use with presence sensing, your camera will no longer switch automatically as you come and go. This is because it only uses your phone’s location to know when you leave or come home.
In the Nest app, change Home/Away Assist settings .
Use these troubleshooting steps if your home fails to switch between Home and Away modes.
Important:If you’re on a phone call by the time you get home, this may be expected behavior. This is because some carriers won’t allow for phone calls and data transfer at the same time.
- Make sure your Nest products are online.
- Check which devices are set to contribute to Home and Away.
- Make sure location services are turned on for any contributing mobile devices.
- Check if there are multiple devices signed in to the same account.
- Being signed in to multiple devices at once can cause issues with Home and Away behavior.
- Check the app if it recorded any activity in Activity History.
Fix schedules and automations that conflict
Sometimes, unexpected camera behavior may happen because of conflicts between:
- Camera schedules
- Presence-based automations that include camera actions
- Custom automations with presence sensing
You may check the sections below to learn more about specific issues.
