topic Re: Familiar Faces Not Working After Migration (Case 7-9099000039863) in Cameras and Doorbells

Familiar Faces Not Working After Migration (Case 7-9099000039863)

TiptopNerd — Sat, 22 Nov 2025 02:28:36 GMT

TL;DR:

After moving my Nest Hello (wired, 1st gen) from the Nest app into Google Home, Familiar Faces completely stopped working. The doorbell still detects Person events and records video normally, but it never detects or adds any faces, even after a full reset and re-setup. Support ran out of ideas and called it a hardware issue, but everything else works perfectly. Hoping to get a backend review.

Full Details

Device: Nest Hello (wired, 1st gen)

Case ID: 7-9099000039863

Model: NEST_HELLO.0

Ever since I transferred the doorbell from the old Nest app into the Google Home app, Familiar Faces has been completely non-functional.

The doorbell detects Person events normally.
It records video and sends notifications without any problems.
Camera placement, lighting, and activity are unchanged.
But no faces ever show up in the “New Faces” section.
The Familiar Faces library stays empty no matter how many times people look directly at the camera.

This only started happening after the migration. It worked perfectly before.

Troubleshooting already done

Verified Nest Aware subscription is active
Confirmed Familiar Faces is enabled at both the Home level and device level
Cleared the entire face library
Factory reset the doorbell
Removed and re-added the device in the Home app
Tested from multiple phones and also from home.google.com
Verified all notification settings
Verified Wi-Fi and power
Support reviewed screenshots of all settings
Support suggested reinstalling the Home app (no change)

Even after all of this, the doorbell still never adds any new faces.

Why it doesn’t seem like a hardware issue

The camera consistently detects Person events, which means:

The sensor is working
The ML detection pipeline is working
Connectivity is good
The device is sending events to the backend
The doorbell is functioning normally in every other way

The only thing failing is the Familiar Faces part, which is a cloud service feature. It really looks like something related to the migration caused a backend configuration problem.

What I’m hoping for

I’d really appreciate help from a Product Expert or Community Manager who can escalate this and ask the internal team to:

Check the Familiar Faces backend association for my Home ID and this device
Confirm whether the migration caused a configuration issue
Refresh or re-provision it if needed

I’m not looking for a replacement. I just want the feature to work again like it did before.

Thanks to anyone who can help or offer guidance.

Chris

Re: Familiar Faces Not Working After Migration (Case 7-9099000039863)

MplsCustomer — Sat, 22 Nov 2025 03:01:23 GMT

This thread seems to be reporting the same issue:

https://www.googlenestcommunity.com/t5/Cameras-and-Doorbells/Familiar-face-detection-is-absolutely-failing-since-migration-to-google/m-p/755255

Re: Familiar Faces Not Working After Migration (Case 7-9099000039863)

TiptopNerd — Sat, 22 Nov 2025 13:11:50 GMT

Thanks for linking that thread. It definitely looks like the same issue I’m seeing, especially the part where Familiar Faces stopped working right after migrating to Google Home while Person events still work.

Since this is affecting multiple Nest Hello users now, I’m hoping a Product Expert can take a look at this and escalate it for a backend review. All the client-side and hardware checks are already done on my end.

Re: Familiar Faces Not Working After Migration (Case 7-9099000039863)

jascen1990 — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 18:31:55 GMT

Same here, no familiar face detection after migrating 1st gen wired Nest Hello to Google Home.

In addition, the preview from Google Home is way worse than what Nest had (iOS 26).

Re: Familiar Faces Not Working After Migration (Case 7-9099000039863)

-Craig — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 11:32:38 GMT

Same here. I was advised by Google Senior Support that I needed to migrate my devices to Google Home, as the Google Nest App would not load, just a spinning circle on multiple devices. However, to migrate to Google Home you need to use the Google Nest App (that didn't load), so I would have to reset ALL devices and add them to Google Home. I did this, now using Google Home with Familiar faces turned ON on all devices, and the Familiar faces library I can view in Google Home, but they are no longer recognised by Google Outdoor Cameras or Google Nest Hello doorbell. I have a ticket open with Google Nest Support about this.

Suggest opening a case with Google to report this, as we are paying for this feature in the Nest Aware/GoogleOne/Google Home Premium/etc or whatever the subscription has been renamed to this week.