Nest switches to Away mode even when I'm home

[Rotzy]

I've been having a problem with my Nest thermostats for quite a while now. They keep switching to away mode even though I'm home.

I use the Home app to manage home/away presence sensing on my Galaxy S25 Ultra. The app's location is set to "allow all the time" and "use precise location", I have turned off "Manage app if unused", battery usage is set to "Unrestricted", and "Allow background data" & "Allow data usage while data saver is on" options are both selected.

Additionally, I've checked and reset the home location of my app (it is correct, but I've reset it anyway), I've toggled presence sensing off and on, I've toggled my "Phone location" under presence sensing off and on and verified that the Nest app is not controlling home/away (only the Home app). I do not use (and have deselected) the option to use the built in sensors in the nest devices.

The link below is a screenshot of my most recent activity events. I assure you, I was home, awake and actively using my phone at 12:54am when the thermostats entered away mode. I've had similar activity when I was home and not using my phone. Notice how it starts (bottom of the list) by saying "switched to away" based on phone location, and a few lines up says "Routine started - Away routine", however the next item above it says "switched to home" based on phone location but no Home Routine was started.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/18v-fPUdYs8saShz63qcbSalscg6A6zut/view?usp=drivesdk

I'm tired of dealing with these, and from a basic search of the internet, I'm not alone. Does anybody have any specific, useful ideas to rectify this behavior?

[EduardoN]

Hi @Rotzy,

Thank you very much for contacting this community! I understand that your Nest Thermostats are repeatedly switching to Away Mode even though you are at home. At this point, I appreciate you trying to verify all the location and battery settings for the Google Home app on your Samsung S25 Ultra. As you indicated, the activity logs in the screenshot effectively confirm that the switch to 'Away' is based on an erroneous phone location. Furthermore, the Home/Away Routines are not running consistently, which indicates a possible problem with the Google Home presence sensing service.

I would like to ask you some questions to be able to give you more troubleshooting:

• Are all your thermostats online in the Google Home app?
• Which devices are set to contribute to Home & Away? Home App: Tap Settings and then Presence sensing.
• Do you have multiple devices signed into the same account?
• When you took the screenshot and it changed automatically, were you on a phone call? This is because some phone carriers won't allow for phone calls and data transfer at the same time.

Please feel free to share any additional details you think might be relevant.

Best regards,
Eduardo

[Rotzy]

Hello, Eduardo.

• Are all your thermostats online in the Google Home app?

           Yes, all three are online in the Home app.

• Which devices are set to contribute to Home & Away? Home App: Tap Settings and then Presence sensing.

          My phone (Galaxy S25 Ultra) and my wife's phone (iPhone 17 Pro Max) are the only two set to use phone locations. I also have my local home Wi-Fi network setup under "Phone location features". Under home devices, I have deselected all three thermostats so their own sensors do not contribute to the presence sensing.

• Do you have multiple devices signed into the same account?

          My wife has her own Google account so only my cell phone is signed in to my google account (along with my watch, windows on my laptop, etc).

• When you took the screenshot and it changed automatically, were you on a phone call? This is because some phone carriers won't allow for phone calls and data transfer at the same time.

          No, I was sitting at home watching tv. I'm sure I was playing with my phone, but no phone calls had been made for 7 hours prior to the events listed on the screenshot (I just checked the call log to be sure).

[EduardoN]

Hi @Rotzy,

Thank you so much for the update! Regarding the issue you've been experiencing, your phone and your wife's phone at home have the correct settings and are using the correct account. You were only using your phone (and not on a call) when this happened. I'd like to provide you with some troubleshooting steps, and based on the results, I will proceed with the next actions.

• Clear the cache on your devices:
  • To clear app cache on an Android
    • Open Settings > Apps.
    • Locate the specific app whose cache they want to clear and tap it.
    • Tap Storage > Clear cache.
  • To clear app cache on an iPhone
    • Open the device’s Settings.
    • Scroll down and tap General > iPhone Storage.
    • Locate the specific app whose cache they want to clear and tap it.
    • Choose between Offload or Delete App.
• Uninstall and reinstall the app.
• Force close the app and reopen it.

Keep me posted.

Best regards,
Eduardo

[Rotzy]

I just got home from a trip and applied your steps. It will take some time to see the results.

Just as a clarification: My wife's iPhone does (and always has) control the presence sensing perfectly. As a continued test, I will temporarily remove her phone from the devices allowed to control home status and focus on my android phone.

[EduardoN]

Hi @Rotzy,

I understand that you have arrived home after your trip, and I hope everything went well. Given that you have already completed the recommended steps and clarified that your wife's phone (presence sensing) works perfectly, please let me know when you have the results so we can continue with this process.

Keep me posted.

Best regards,
Eduardo

[Nguyeba]

Eduardo, pls kindly advise recent comments below about this similar issue, and advise on how to troubleshoot.  Many thanks!

[thegios]

@Nguyeba / @Rotzy 
Edusardo here will be useless, by experience: they follow a basic script and have to contact with Google.
Listen to me: opena  case with google. I'ts still useless, but at least you will talk to Google.

I've had this problem for weeks, I have a case open with Google and they admitted there is a general problem affecting some users, yet they have o idea how to fix this. They know tehre are many users with the same problem.

This forum is useless, do not waste your time here.

[Nguyeba]

I have the same issue with Nest kept switching to Away mode even though I am home or at night while sleeping.  I did not enable my phone location and only use thermostat presence sensing.  Works perfectly with prior Nest versions, so I suspect the issue is related to Google home app after installing Nest v.4 as support phaseout for v.1 & v.2 and cannot use Nest app with v.4

[Rotzy]

Mine has stopped doing it, for now, but it's been a problem since the first day I installed them (years ago).

[thegios]

I've been having this problem for weeks since upgrading to v4.3

This week also a new problem : manual home/away switch is not working any longer.