Nest Thermostat only confirms someone is Home when there is motion, location tracking no worky

[Drez143]

As the subject indicates, I've come across an issue with my Nest thermostat.

For years, I have had my location tracking setup and the thermostat set to auto-away/home based on my phone location or the motion tracking of the thermostat.

As of the past several weeks, I've discovered that the thermostat only recognizes I am home if I walk in front of it.  If I spend hours within my office, the heating in my home stops until I walk up to the thermostat, in which it then "wakes up" and goes right into heating.

Earlier today, I saw this all first hand.  We left the house and the thermostat went into away mode.  The screen shots attached show that at 11:51am, the Nest detected that I was home (this is when I did come back).  After ~30 minutes, I realized the HVAC never turned on and the house was cold, so I walked up to it at 12:27pm in which it quickly realized there was activity and went to turn the heat on.

Again, I never had this issue for years, and I have not touched any app on my phone.  Typing this out, and looking up the details of the thermostat, I see that an update was pushed at the end of March to the thermostat.  Being several weeks ago, I am 95% confident that this update to the thermostat broke this feature and caused this issue. 

Any suggested next steps?

Model : Display-3.4

Backplate Model : Backplate-5.4

Updates : March 27, 2025 @ 12:22am

[Rixington43]

Just to add to this post. There are 3 nest 3rd gen stats in my family (all in the UK). All of them have stopped responding to phone location in the last month. A mixture of iPhone and Android, motion sensor included in home/away and some not. The app recognises when phones are at home and not at home but the app doesn't switch accordingly and therefore neither does the thermostat. I've tried removing phones, enabling different phones, uninstalling and re installing the app, rebooting and even resetting the thermostat, nothing resolves the issue. I'm inclined to agree that there must be an underlying issue here as your failure start date lines up with all 3 of us.

I don't believe in coincidences....

[Rixington43]

Follow up.

Spoke to nest support who confirmed they are aware of an issue with home away assist and phone location tracking. It is with their engineering team but no resolution has been issued as yet. I should be informed once it's resolved but I'd imagine it will be in the form of an app update in due course.

[Drez143]

Well, thank you for confirming I am not insane.  I imagined that since this worked for so long, then all of a sudden broke, that it had to be an update issue somewhere.  Either with the device itself, or within their app.

[maedacortez]

Hey Drez143,

Thanks for reaching out! I understand that your Google Nest thermostat only detects when you're home if you walk directly in front of it. I'm happy to help! To better understand the situation, could you please answer a few questions?

• Do you have any other Google Nest devices in your home?
• How many people use your account?
• Have you checked if your Google Nest thermostat has a good Wi-Fi connection?

I'll be waiting for your response.

Regards,

Manuel

[Drez143]

• Do you have any other Google Nest devices in your home?

I do not.

• How many people use your account?

Just me.

• Have you checked if your Google Nest thermostat has a good Wi-Fi connection?

The thermostat has a fantastic wi-fi connection.  
As I highlighted, everything worked great, for years, until a recent update was pushed.

[maedacortez]

Hi Drez143,

Thanks for your reply. I recommend you verify if your home address appears correctly on your Nest app. Please follow these steps:

In the Nest app, tap Settings, then Home Info, and then Address. Type in the address, then drag the map so that the pin is at your home.

Please let me know if it works.

Regards,

Manuel

[Drez143]

Yes, it’s all correct.

I don’t mean to be snarky, but did you look at the attached screenshots I included in my original post?

It shows that my nest was aware that my phone was back home at 11:51am, but it didn’t  actually move back into “Home” until 12:27pm after the thermostat saw physical activity in front of it.

Seeing that, why would this be a WiFi signal issue or if I have my home location setup right?  It’s setup right, as the thermostat saw all of this when I arrived back home before noon.  Also to boot, this had worked for YEARS correctly, until something magically changed on the software side.

[Rixington43]

All 3 of the aforementioned systems have suddenly started recognising phone location and operating home away assist again without us changing anything. Not working yesterday but working again today. As if by magic 🤔.

[Drez143]

I have the heat turned off today, so I haven’t had a chance then to see if the issue persists.  I’ll be able to test if it’s fixed on my end on Monday.