Use this article to learn about any devices that you manage in the Nest app. For devices that you manage in the Google Home app, go to Learn about presence-based automations.
You can set up Home/Away Assist to automatically switch the behavior of your home's Nest products when you leave or return home. Home/Away Assist uses input from the activity sensors in your Nest products and your phone’s location. You can manage this feature through the Nest app to automatically optimize your home's energy efficiency and comfort.
Open the Nest app any time to check whether your home is in Home or Away mode.
Home/Away Assist has 2 ways to determine when to switch your Nest products between Home and Away modes:
- Phone location: It checks the location of household members’ phones to determine if they are home or away.
- Nest product activity: It monitors activity detected by your Nest products. This includes motion or sound to confirm presence.
Once you’ve set up Home/Away Assist to use your phone’s location, it uses a combination of cellular and Wi-Fi data, and GPS from your phone to help tell when you leave or come back home.
Nest doesn't record your phone’s exact location like a GPS app as it only needs to know whether you’ve left or come back. Your phone’s location also isn’t used to determine when exactly you walk in the door or drive out of the garage.
Instead, the app defines a large area around your home called a geofence that acts like a home zone. The Nest app only gets a notification from the location services of your phone’s OS to determine when you enter or leave your home zone.
For example, if you walk over to your next-door neighbor’s house, your home may not switch to Away because you still may be within your home’s geofence.
Learn about presence sensing and how to manage your data.
Troubleshoot Home & Away Routines and Home/Away Assist.
Tips:
- Only use one phone to help with Home/Away Assist. If you have more than one mobile device, pick the one you take with you most often.
- Enable cellular data and Wi-Fi in your phone’s settings.
What happens when you leave and come home depends on which products you have connected to the Nest app and how you’ve set their behaviors.
During setup, the Nest app will ask if you want your product to use information from Home/Away Assist to automatically switch behaviors. Any time after setup, you can easily change Home/Away Assist behavior in Settings.
If you don’t want to use Home/Away Assist, you don’t have to.
You can invite anyone you trust to control the Nest products in your home with the app. Let invited members use their own phones to help with Home/Away Assist, just like you do.
Learn about Family Accounts and how to share access to your Nest home.
Manage people and permissions in the Google Home app. This feature is only available if you use a Google Account to access and control your home and Nest devices.
If you haven't migrated your Nest account to a Google Account and only control your Nest products in the Nest app, you can only use Home/Away Assist. We recommend you migrate your Nest Account to a Google Account.
Presence-based automations in the Google Home app and Home/Away Assist in the Nest app work together seamlessly.
You and anyone in your home can choose to use phone location with Home/Away Assist or presence-based automations at any time. You can also turn phone location sharing off altogether.
To learn more about the differences between Home/Away Assist and presence-based automations, go to Learn about presence-based automations.
You can also learn how to:
The Home/Away Assist Activity History will show you activity events as well as when your home switched between Home and Away for the past 10 days. It'll show a list of events as well as some of the reasons for each switch.
You can use this information to help troubleshoot if your home doesn’t switch between Home and Away when you expect it to.
To access Activity History for your home:
- Tap Settings
on the Nest app home screen.
- Tap Home/Away Assist
.
- Scroll down and select Activity History.
Activity history can be viewed by the Owner of a Nest home or anyone that has Full Access. Anyone with Home Entry Only access will not be able to view the Activity History. Learn more about differences between levels of shared access.
You won’t have an option to disable Activity History, so make sure to only invite people you trust to your account.
Phone location
Anyone invited to the account can access information about their own phone location in the Activity History. For example, your Activity History might show something like:
- Your phone left
- Your phone came home
If you access an Activity History event that involves another user’s phone, it'll show more general information. You won’t know whose phone triggered the event. For example, your history might read something like:
- The last phone left
- A phone came home
Manually switching your home to Away is faster than waiting for Nest to notice that you’ve left. You can also use a manual switch to help troubleshoot when your Nest products fail to switch as expected. For example, set Home mode to stay warm while you troubleshoot a thermostat issue.
If you’re at home and you manually put your home into Away mode, it’ll remain in Home mode for about 5 minutes. This gives you some time to leave. After 5 minutes, your Nest products will automatically switch back to Home if they notice you’re still around.
Switch mode in the Google Home app
- Open the Google Home app
.
- In the search bar at the top left, tap Home
or Away
, then choose the mode you want.
Switch mode in the Nest app
- Open the Nest app on your phone, tablet, or computer. If you have more than one home, select the home you want to control.
- Tap Home.
- Select Home or Away to change your home's mode.
Tip: You can't use your Google Nest thermostat to set Home or Away mode, but you can manually switch your thermostat to Eco Temperatures. Learn about Eco Temperatures, Eco when away & how to change settings.