topic Re: Still impossible to add family member for Nest Protect - 7 years after Nest acquisition. WTF?!? in Nest Protect

Still impossible to add family member for Nest Protect - 7 years after Nest acquisition. WTF?!?

HollyGates — Sat, 11 Sep 2021 21:00:32 GMT

I outfitted two apartments with Nest protects in 2016. Everything was fine for a while. One apartment is a rental so I need to add and delete family members in that home as tenants come and go. A couple years ago I tried doing this in the app and it said that the Nest app no longer supported that and I had to use Google Home. As we all know, Google Home does not support Nest Protect products.

Just tried latest version of Nest and Google Home apps - still does not work. I called Nest support and they confirmed that it is IMPOSSIBLE to add a new family member for Nest Protects.

This is just not acceptable. Google bought Nest SEVEN years ago. They broke the add family member functionality in the Nest app at least 3 years ago. Seems to me there is little sign they intend on doing anything about it.

The accessibility of the alarms from the app and the functions that enables are the reason I bought these alarms that cost about 4x what normal alarms cost. Then Google broke much of that functionality. The products I spent thousands of dollars on no longer work they way they did when I bought them. I feel utterly f&*^cked by google. I don't even want any features that might or might not be enabled by Google Home. I just want the product to work as well as it did when I bought it. Instead I have expensive crippled hardware that Google messed up by stealth after I paid for it.

Re: Still impossible to add family member for Nest Protect - 7 years after Nest acquisition. WTF?!?

Ashepherdson — Sat, 11 Sep 2021 22:50:54 GMT

So the simple answer is , you need to add them through your Google account, under manage account, sharing, add family. Saying this, the way you are looking to use this isn't truly the way it was meant to work, so someone from Google might have to answer directly if my response does not work for you.

Re: Still impossible to add family member for Nest Protect - 7 years after Nest acquisition. WTF?!?

HollyGates — Sun, 12 Sep 2021 00:01:47 GMT

I can add someone on my Google Home app, but Google Home app seems to have no way of interacting with Nest Protects. I can see Nest Protects in Nest app but can not add family there.

Re: Still impossible to add family member for Nest Protect - 7 years after Nest acquisition. WTF?!?

HollyGates — Sun, 12 Sep 2021 00:06:07 GMT

So the result is that it is impossible to allow someone else access to Nest Protects. Phone support person said I should just give my gmail password to anyone who wants access and they can log in as me to Nest app. Handing out my Gmail password to any number of other people is not an acceptable solution.

Re: Still impossible to add family member for Nest Protect - 7 years after Nest acquisition. WTF?!?

Ashepherdson — Sun, 12 Sep 2021 00:07:17 GMT

No you can add family through the Google home app, which will then appear in the nest app. For example, I added my wife through Google home, now she can access the nest protects through the nest app on her phone.

Re: Still impossible to add family member for Nest Protect - 7 years after Nest acquisition. WTF?!?

HollyGates — Mon, 13 Sep 2021 19:22:11 GMT

You are right! Thanks for replying here. I had tried this before and it did not work. I found out I had to delete the Home in Nest and start over creating a new one after the account was migrated.

So here is my summary of what worked for me:

Both people

install latest version of Nest and Google Home apps
create accounts and/or log in to both apps using gmail address and Google login
if Nest account is old, migrate account to Google, shut app, relogin with google login
delete old homes in Nest and Google Home apps

Person 1 (primary)

Create a new home in Nest app and add Protects to it
should be able to see new home in Google Home app
invite Person 2 to home in Google Home app

Person 2 (secondary)

accept invite to home in Google Home app
should be able to see home in Nest app, along with the Protects attached to it

Re: Still impossible to add family member for Nest Protect - 7 years after Nest acquisition. WTF?!?

Jake — Tue, 21 Sep 2021 18:58:16 GMT

Hey all,

I just wanted to reach out and see if everyone is good to go? Please let me know if you have any questions from here.

Best regards,

Jake

Re: Still impossible to add family member for Nest Protect - 7 years after Nest acquisition. WTF?!?

HollyGates — Tue, 21 Sep 2021 19:04:54 GMT

Yes, I have gotten a workaround to make the Nest Protect products to be at the same level of functionality as when I bought them (described in my previous post). So I'm all set for now. Hope this could help others as well.

Re: Still impossible to add family member for Nest Protect - 7 years after Nest acquisition. WTF?!?

Jake — Tue, 21 Sep 2021 22:06:24 GMT

Hey HollyGates,

Glad to hear that worked out for you, and thank you so much for sharing what worked as well for others. Let me know if you run into any questions in the future, and I hope you have an amazing rest of your day.

Best regards,

Jake

Re: Still impossible to add family member for Nest Protect - 7 years after Nest acquisition. WTF?!?

Jake — Thu, 23 Sep 2021 20:52:37 GMT

Hey all,

I am going to lock the thread at this time and if you have any questions, please feel free to create a new post.

Best regards,

Jake