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Nest app keeps switching to away when I'm home

abellaj
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Disclaimer: This thread was migrated from our previous version of the Google Nest Community.  You can continue to receive updates on your thread issue here or simply ask, browse or more in the new Google Nest Community. 

Original Poster: Jeff Rich

I have 2 nest cameras and two nest E thermostats. I have verified that home/away assist is turned off for all 4 devices yet two or three times a day I feel hot air blowing, check the app, and find it set to away and using eco temperatures, which is also turned off for both thermostats.

 
Am I missing a setting somewhere? I don't want to use home/away or eco temps, but Nest seems to think it knows better and does what it wants.
61 REPLIES 61

abellaj
Community Specialist
Community Specialist
Hi everyone, 
 
Thanks for sharing, and I'm sorry for the delay. To isolate the issue further, lease check the Home/Away Assist Activity History. This will show you activity events as well as when your home switched between Home and Away for the past 10 days. You’ll see a list of events as well as some of the reasons for each switch. Here's how: 
  1. Tap Settings  on the Nest app home screen.
  2. Tap Home/Away Assist 
  3. Scroll down and select Activity History.
 
Thanks,
 
Edward
Community Specialist

Jimhabs
Community Member

please give us a real answer to this issue. 
are our thermostats failing at their jobs?

robsmith
Community Member

So your inability to troubleshoot means the thermostat failed?  Not.

DT
Community Member

So why don't you offer help or a suggestion then, instead of acting like a child?

robsmith
Community Member

Sure, happy to.  Read the documentation.  There’s plenty of it.

Jimhabs
Community Member

Where is any documentation?

where is any support?

I don't see any responses here about troubleshooting, and what to do about this problem...do you have the answer???  Because I'd love to hear it!

Jimhabs
Community Member

How do I reconnect my nest to the app after deleting and reinstalling the app?

Most likely history will be similar for others having this issue .i.e. 

Away - 8:05 am no activity

Home - set with you, nest app. Also the time your wife complains about the house being warm when your "smart" thermostat isn't working

 

Me personally have the irony of nest app saying it hasn't heard from my phone in a few days check settings. Which settings tell me location was accessed by nest 1 min ago. Makes total sense!

 

B_Hurd
Community Member

What’s the point of the log? It’s switching to away 4-7 times a day while we’re gone and I have this feature turned off. Says “no activity in the house” even though we’re all working here. 

Ryan_G
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hi B_Hurd,

 

Thanks for the reply.

 

Let's check further what's going on. How long have you been experiencing this issue? Which Nest Thermostat are you using? Where is the location of your thermostat?

 

Let us know by replying to this thread.

 

Regards,

Ryan

B_Hurd
Community Member

Hey, I think I finally figured it out. I had the activity settings for how it knows I’m home off and when I’m away still on. You’ve got to select “home” and “away” at the top and I hadn’t. So far it’s working but it’s only been a few hours. 

DT
Community Member

I don't want Away on at all. Why can't I turn it off? This is super irritating.

Ddkudras
Community Member

I’m having the exact same problem. I have location settings off, I have the hallway monitor off, I am always home I want it set to home. I’ll go in, switch it to home within minutes it’s set itself back to away. 

mas92107
Community Member

I turned it off today after many months of the app mistakenly determining my phone has left the building.  

 

This morning the heat turned on at 7am as programmed.  

I woke up and unlocked my phone and opened the Nest app.

12 MINUTES LATER the Nest app - still active on my still-unlocked phone - switches to AWAY!!!

I have now turned off the Home/Away assist for both apps.

 

This in addition to turning off the "smart/learning" functions within a few weeks of purchase - which were even more USELESS and MADENNING - means I have been duped by Google marketing geniuses into paying (I-don't-want-to-go-back-and-check-how-much-$$$) for a dumb wall device.

Have also turned off the smart/learning, and the home/away to off...the problem persists!!  It is maddening!!  

carvecream
Community Member

Similar issue with our Nest E. So  annoying. It seemed to work fine for the first year or two. Maybe I'll try a full reset and see what happens, like I have time to deal with this **bleep**e.

Jimhabs
Community Member

I restarted my nest, deleted the app and reloaded it. Now I can’t connect my nest to the app. It says it is already connected to an app. Now it’s just an ordinary programmable thermostat 

gypsyldy
Community Member

When re-adding to the app, bypass the QR code, and go straight to Entry Key!  This has worked every time!  Learned by another member here...not by Google!  

angelsolutions
Community Member

I have this issue too ... been home all day and app showing away ... heating doesn’t come on in the morning because it thinks I am away from home ... seems to be a recent issue?

So I'm not the only one this has been happening to me lately I wake up sweating because AC doesn't turn on thinking I'm away

LiliB
Community Member

It happens to me too.

My exact problem. I set the thermostat to 72 when I go to bed. I have medicine that I have I put out to use in the morning and it has to be in a room that is 77° or less or else I have to wait 45 minutes once I pull it out of the fridge the next morning. I wake up at 4 AM and it’s 78 in my room because my thermostat bumped it up to 80 thinking I wasn’t home. I’ve turned the auto learning off I don’t know what else to do 

Vickir
Community Member

Did anyone ever get an actual answer to this? I'm freezing at my desk. Every time I turn it back up it thinks I'm away and turns it down again. Frustrating. 

Joobrienjo
Community Member

We too are suffering with “Away” syndrome. Our seems to misbehave since we moved to Google control. Wish we could disconnect 

TobyGr
Community Member

We’re also having this issue. We’ve had to turn the “smart” heating because it turned the heating on in the middle of the night. 
And this morning, yet again, it’s freezing because it’s decided I’m “away”, even though, when I check the activity history there is nothing for the past 7 days, despite me going out every day for a run, and yesterday there is 1 event entitled “No activity in house.  Set to away” despite me being in most of the day.

Going to have to use Home Assistant to automatically correct Nest’s failings. Which it could also do with much cheaper thermostats. 😒

Wixenstyx
Community Member

Just want to chime in that I'm having the same issue.  I work from home now more often than not, so I don't need it to switch to 'Away' but very rarely.  The fact that it supposedly should be tracking my phone's location doesn't seem to be working at all.  I'm glad to know I'm not alone, but I'm also SUPER FRUSTRATED because the app I have is a Google Home app.  There is no separate Google Nest app available in the Google Store, and my app does not need an update... so I assume I have the most current version of whatever I'm supposed to have.

But that means that every single support document I can find tells me to tap on Settings and go to 'Home Away Assist', and THAT OPTION DOES NOT EXIST IN MY APP.   There is a "Presence Sensing" option that seems comparable, but I have to go to Routines to do anything with Home/Away.  Even there, I have no capacity to edit the 'Start' actions for either Home or Away.   

I also cannot see my 'Presence History', but helpfully (I guess?) I can DELETE it?  Why?  What would that even do?

I finally just removed my thermostats from the Home/Away routines entirely.  They have their own schedules on them that worked fine before whatever this is happened, and I'm going to see if that corrects the issue.

Seriously, Google.. how broken can you get?

robsmith
Community Member

Holy crap people, overreact much??  The app does 99.9% things really well.  One issue doesn’t make the whole thing bad.

Hi rob the issue here is peoples heating is turning off and house goes cold ... so it may well only be one little issue to you but it is actually affecting people

I have the exact same issue but all it takes is adjusting the app, not the end of the world.

DT
Community Member

Maybe you could expand on "adjusting the app"?

We've all "adjusted the app" and it does nothing to solve the problem. I have had to manually tell my app that I am "home" multiple times, even though I've never left my house, and within an hour it switches back saying that I am "away" again (Activity History states "No activity in the house") and goes into Eco Mode.

To be clear, I have "troubleshot" this, each time that I've had to manually tell Google that I'm home. This includes both:

  1. Going into "Home/Away Assist" in the Nest App
    1. -> "What decides if you're home"
    2. "Use Phone Location" = "Yes"
    3. "Products (Should this thermostat use its activity sensors to figure out if anyone's home)" = "No" (for those working from home who aren't constantly getting up and walking in front of their thermostat throughout the day)
  2. AND Going into the Google Home App...
    1. -> "Settings"
    2. -> "Features"/"Presence Sensing"
    3. "Allow this home to use phone locations" = "Yes"
    4. "Nest Thermostat"/"Touch control & motion detection" = "No" (Same reasoning as above.)

Now please, tell us what we are doing wrong instead of saying we just need to "adjust the app"...

This was it! Thank you so much. I didn't realize I had to set it in the Google Home app as well. This solve the issue 100%.

Ryan_G
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hi SamuraiAvenger,

 

Thanks for being here in the Google Nest Community.

 

It's great to hear that you were able to get your Home and Away up and running now. That's one good point of having the Google Home app with you.

 

Let us know if you have other questions by replying to this thread.

 

Regards,

Ryan

Glad this worked for you! For some reason this "fix" didn't work for me though 😕 I think ultimately my problem goes deeper though because my Google Home app still seems to want to connect to an old phone that I haven't used in years (hence it doesn't see that I'm "home" when it should) so maybe once that bug gets figured out I might have better luck haha.

Ryan_G
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hi Doe_a_Deer,

 

Thanks for the reply.

 

I am sorry that you're still experiencing the issue. You're right, if the app is still linked to the other account and device, this might be one of the reasons why we're having this behavior. 

 

Have you tried doing a reset on your Nest devices and do the setup on the Google Home app on your new mobile device?

 

Regards,

Ryan

EdwardT
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hi Doe_a_Deer,

 

I wanted to follow up and see if you are still in need of any help. Please let me know if you are still having any trouble from here, as I would be happy to take a closer look and assist you further.

 

Thanks,

Edward

Wrong again bud!  Adjusting the app does not work!  Why is that so hard to wrap your brain around?  And since you have all the answers, please, share with us your magic skills to adjust the app "correctly" (in your own mind), so maybe we'll understand wth you're talking about! 

It's not overreacting to want something you purchased to work properly!!!  It's 100 degrees out right now!  I have my air on, for obvious reasons, and I have the home/away assist OFF...it still shows away, and I'm sleeping!!!  In my own bed in my home!  And the temperature in my house is soaring, on it's own accord because of this, and now we're all sweating!  I don't know about you, but personally, I prefer not to sweat!  If you prefer to, knock your socks off!