Hey Google Home & Nest Community,
We’re here to share some helpful changes to the camera experience that we think you’ll enjoy! The team has been working diligently on performance improvements and new features.
Unlock more insights from your camera with Gemini
Your cameras now go beyond simple recording and work together to tell you the whole story. Here are the major improvements with this update:
- Improved event history and details: The redesigned experience maintains the visibility of the player window while scrolling and includes improved feedback flows.
- Zoomed-in previews: Thumbnail previews are now animated clips that focus on the subject so you can see exactly what happened at a glance.1,2
- Enhanced timeline navigation: With an Advanced plan of Google Home Premium, your timeline view will include event descriptions, making it easier and more enjoyable to scroll through your history and identify interesting moments.
- Event filtering: With filter options, you can easily find what you care about most by sorting your event list by specific criteria, such as Person seen, Package seen, Glass break heard, or Activity Zone.
Easier and more accurate familiar face detection
We’ve made some improvements to familiar face detection and made it easier to refine so you can spot people you know more accurately and get more reliable alerts.
- “Thumbs up/down” buttons: We launched feedback buttons on familiar faces previews. Over time this will help make familiar face detection more accurate when it sends you alerts.
- Face library management: Familiar face detection now automatically excludes low-quality examples—such as blurry, ghosted, non-frontal, or small faces—to maintain a clean and effective face library.
Learn more about familiar face detection here.
Enhancements for earlier generation cameras
We have expanded select Google Home Premium features to earlier generation cameras in the Google Home app.
- Event descriptions: Gemini now generates event descriptions for earlier generation Nest cameras when you have an Advanced plan of Google Home Premium. Simply make sure you’ve enabled ‘Gemini for Home camera features’ via camera settings in the Google Home app.2
- Zoomed-in previews: Notifications with animated clips that focus on the subject, framing a person, package, vehicle, or pet.1,2
Continued performance and navigation improvements
Whether you want to know what's happening right now or quickly see what happened in the past, the improvements we’ve made over the last few months, along with the features we announced last year, are designed to give you a more intuitive way to keep an eye on your home.
By implementing fluid UI patterns and animated previews to improve latency, the Google Home app feels robust and responsive, prioritizing your actions.
- Improved timeline scrolling: Find the moments that matter, faster. We’ve improved camera scrubbing frame rates and clarity so you can scroll through your camera history smoothly and clearly.
- Video history quick seek buttons:This popular feature allows you to effortlessly jump through your camera’s recorded events with 10-second forward or backward seek buttons.
- Intuitive camera controller gestures:Our camera controller gestures let you navigate with simple swipes. Swipe left/right for Timeline/Events, pull down on the control bar to resize the video player, or swipe down on the camera to dismiss it.
- Event descriptions improvements: We've refined our camera event descriptions to remove unnecessary clutter, making them more accurate and easier to read at a glance.2
- Simplified camera settings: We have redesigned your camera settings so everything is much easier to find. Useful features like Gemini for Home, familiar face detection, and Activity Zones–which are faster to set up and manage–are now front and center. Plus, your “seen” and “heard” events are on a single page, making it super simple to manage your notifications and recordings.
This was a jam packed update and we hope you enjoy these improvements to the camera experience! Keep an eye on our release notes to stay up to date on these rollouts.
Thanks,
Josh, Product Manager, Google Home & Nest
1 Alerts and notifications can vary by devices and whether you have a Google Home Premium subscription or not. For more details about available features, select your camera or doorbell here https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/9233159
2 Requires Google Home Premium subscription with compatible smart device (sold separately), Google Home app, Wi-Fi, and internet connection. Features subject to change; available in select countries and languages. Gemini features work independently of Gemini apps. Check responses for accuracy; results may vary.
