Hey Google Nest Community,
Let’s talk about cameras. The team has been working diligently on some new features and performance improvements that we think you’ll be interested in!
The Google Home app camera experience has recently received more new camera features including:
- Preview snapshots in camera tiles: Camera tiles now display a preview image from a previous live view, allowing you to quickly identify your camera without waiting for the live view to load. This should also create a quicker loading feel for cameras when opening the app.
- Intuitive camera controller gestures: Simple swiping gesture support to allow you to effortlessly control common navigation features rather than multiple taps.
- Switch between Timeline and Events List with a left or right swipe
- Expand and collapse the player window with a swipe down on the middle control bar
- Dismiss the camera with a swipe downwards on the camera player
- Switch between Timeline and Events List with a left or right swipe
Learn more about video history controls in the Google Home app.
- Improved event notification previews: All camera event notifications now include a static thumbnail along with a large animated preview of the event to help you understand what the notification is about.
- On iOS, press and hold the notification to see the animation.
- On Android, click the expand arrow on the notification to view the animation.
- On iOS, press and hold the notification to see the animation.
In addition to new features, you should notice recent performance improvements including:
- Improved camera live playback: We've made under-the-hood corrections to ensure the app accurately reports whether your camera is online or offline, improving live streaming performance.
- Enhanced Camera Performance: Experience reduced latency to the first frame and improved reliability for cameras through better signaling.
- Reduced "no video available" errors: Camera users will see fewer cases where a recent video is not yet available for streaming.
- Camera stream reliability: Fixed an issue where turning a camera off and on during a live stream would result in a "Camera Unavailable" error, ensuring the stream recovers properly.
Based directly on input from users like you, we've focused on creating a smoother, faster, and more reliable camera experience. We're excited to highlight these new features and key improvements along with updates we previously shared below:
- Video history quick seek: Effortlessly jump through your camera's recorded events with added 10-second forward and backward seek buttons to the camera controls by double tapping the left or right side of the video player. Learn more about video history controls in the Google Home app.
- Smoother history scrolling: We've improved the performance when scrolling through your camera's history timeline on Android (iOS coming soon), making it more fluid and responsive. Check out this blog article!
- More seamless timeline review: We've refined the timeline scrolling to better handle gaps between event recordings, providing a more continuous and focused viewing experience of your important footage.
- Improved performance for original Nest Cam, Nest Cam Outdoor, and Nest Doorbell devices: You should now see substantially improved reliability and speed for your original Nest Cam, Nest Cam Outdoor, and Nest Doorbell devices. This includes a significant reduction in video and audio upload failures, much faster event uploads, and improved video encoding quality for a clearer picture.
- General polish and increased clarity: We've resolved multiple bugs to enhance the reliability of the live camera view on your home page. You'll also notice more helpful and clear messages when video isn't available, providing better understanding.
We also wanted to take a moment to thank you all. While we may not always hit the mark, we remain committed to listening to our users and building intuitive, reliable, and high-performing camera features for your home. These changes and improvements were driven by your feedback from the Public Preview program and the migration of Nest cameras. We are incredibly grateful for your engagement and for being honest with us on where we could do better. We have more camera improvements in the pipeline that we can’t wait to share once they’re available.
Speaking of the Public Preview program, if this is your first time hearing about it, consider signing up! Public Preview gives you early access to the latest Google Home app features before they're made broadly available. Participants can try new features and give feedback so that Google can continue to make improvements before the features are released to everyone. You can read more about it here!
We hope you enjoy these improvements to the camera experience! If you want to read more about what changed this version, take a look at our release notes.
Thanks,
Josh, Product Manager, Google Home & Nest
