Home/away assist doesn’t recognize other family members

[Dominic]

Hi all,

probably I missed an existing thread on this but couldn’t find any help.

Our situation is as follows: we have Nest thermostats and smoke alarms. I am the only account holder as my wife is not interested in home automation.

The problem is as follows: home/away is set such that it relies on my mobile phone location, and motion sensing from the thermostats and smoke alarms. When I leave for work, the home goes on “away” even if my wife and daughter are still home. Does the phone location “override” any other motion sensing? 

Thanks a lot for any ideas how to best solve this.

[Jenelyn_O]

Hi Dominic,

Thanks for reaching out. I'm sorry for the delay. Presence sensing works best if every member of your household enables their individual phones in presence sensing settings in the Home app. If some members of your household don't use these settings, your devices may not sense that person as being home, even when they are, and your routines may not work like you expect them to.

Follow this guide to turn on presence sensing:

1. Open the Google Home app .
2. Tap Settings .
3. In the "Home features" section, tap Presence sensing.
4. Tap the switch next to Allow this home to use the phone location to turn it on or off.

You can visit this link for more information.

Best,

Jenelyn

[Jenelyn_O]

Hi there,

I just want to check if you managed to see the response above. Were you able to try the troubleshooting steps that have been provided? Please let us know how it goes.

Thanks,

Jenelyn

[Dominic]

Hi Jenelyn,

thanks for your response. This is understood, it unfortunately doesn’t solve our problem that our home switches to “away” when I leave despite other household members still being home and I would have hoped for presence sensing to pick that up.

Best, Dominic

[lerax]

I have the same problem. I think I'll need to deactivate the automation.

[sycholime]

I'm having the same issue. Any update on this? My phone is the only one recognized for location.

[sycholime]

I can't believe it - I finally figured this stupid thing out. I was having the issue wherein whenever I left the house, the Home / Away routines would kick in even if my wife was still home (Nest Cameras would turn on, notifications galore, etc.) I spent hours scouring forums to find a solution and never did. Instead, I just stumbled upon the solution clicking on every menu in Nest, Home, and Location Settings. It was maddening. Some details:

• In Google Home, the Presence Sensing menu would show "Your Location" with a Phone Location toggle on my phone as well as a section labeled "Other Phones" with my wife's phone and the words "Location access on"
• However, on my wife's phone there was no "Your Location" section at all. It only had the "Other Phones" section, displaying my name with the words "Location access on".
• Eventually I noticed that in the Nest app (not Google Home), if I turned off the "Use phone location" option in Home/Away assist, it would also turn off the Presence Sensing option on Google Home (labeled "Allow this home to use phone locations"). I turned it back on because this didn't solve the problem, but it proved there was a connection between the two apps that could be causing a conflict.
• Then I noticed that under the "People" section of the "What decides" menu, the word "No" was next to my name and "Yes" was next to my wife's. It turned out that changing this granular setting next to my wife's name fixed our problem.

TLDR? My exact solution:

• Open the Nest app
• Tap the Settings (gear) icon
• Tap the Home/Away Assist setting
• Tap "What decides if you're home"
• Check that "Use phone location" is set to "Yes"
• Ensure that all users listed under "People" are set to "No"
• Open the Google Home App on whichever phone location has been so rudely ignored
• Tap the Settings icon
• Tap the Presence Sensing setting
• Turn on the toggle next to "Phone location"
• Ensure that "Home" or "Away" is selected, consistent with where you are

I just figured since I killed copious hours trying to figure this out, I might as well spend even more time writing out this solution in great detail in case there is a teeny tiny, microscopic, or even sub-atomic chance that I can save someone out there the absolute torture of trying to figure this out themselves - or even worse - get on a live chat or phone call with a professional that is going to feed them the most generic of solutions. "Did you turn on location? Are you sure? Are you really sure??? Restart your phone? Okay fill out this form." I kid.

Good luck out there, troubleshooters. Hope this helps.

[Gromit1234]

Thank you so much for publishing your research and findings. I have a similar problem. When I leave the house, the thermostat goes to away and Eco, regardless of whether there is someone in the house in front of the thermostat.

 I have noticed something which may or may not be relevant. If I go to Google Home and go into presence setting and turn on Phone Location, the Nest app will then switch off phone location. And if I then switch the phone location back on in the Nest app, Google Home will switch the phone location off. It’s one or the other - I cannot have both on at the same time. so effectively the only way in which Home and Away even works, is for me to delete Google Home which is what I’ve done, but they still does not solve the issue of my thermostat not sensing any presence.  FYI, this issue has so far gone on for two years since I first got the Nest thermostat and I’m currently on my fourth unit. The support people are to put it politely rather basic. 

For the purpose of trying to simplify and isolate matters, my wife has deleted the Nest app and Google Home from her phone entirely so I am currently the only user.

Any ideas please?

[EandJ2025]

Does this still work for you? Best solution?

[EandJ2025]

I'm having the same kind of issues...

I set up everything and my phone and account is the one everything is assigned to, but she has and uses everything just a lot less... But the problem is more recently after switching over to the Google Home app and transferring from the nest app that I don't really use anymore after Home being able to control everything. My wife's phone doesn't seem to recognize when she's at the house and turn the system from away to home or stay on home if I leave