New updates are being added at the bottom of this story…….

Original story (published on October 24, 2021) follows:

The smart home world has quite a number of brands, but two of the most popular ones are Google Home and Nest. Both are products of Google, but there’s plenty of confusion around the usage of these names.

Google acquired Nest in 2014, but the company remained independent as an Alphabet subsidiary until the Nest and Home brands merged into “Google Nest” a few years later.

Despite the merger, Nest-branded smart home products continued to hit the market while Google also went ahead with churning out products in its Home lineup.

Google_Home_Mini_Feature_image

But not long after, the Google Home Hub was renamed to Google Nest Hub and the widely popular Google Home Mini smart speaker got a re-branded successor dubbed Google Nest Mini.

Setting up and controlling both Home and Nest smart home devices requires an app. And this is where things start getting messy and even more confusing for the average user.

Over the years, Nest devices have had their own Nest app while Google Home devices are controlled via the Home app. Despite the merger, these apps still exist independently to date.

Sure, Google has been pushing to unify the Nest and Home apps or rather migrate Nest users over to the Home app. This transition from Google Nest app to Home app started more than two years ago.

As I pen this, the search giant has yet to fully migrate all functions from Nest app to Home app, something that has recently been frustrating owners of latest Nest smart home products.

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Google Nest Cam battery

One method Google employed in the transition was to notify existing Nest accounts owners that they’d be required to switch over to Google accounts if they wanted to enjoy new features and deeper integration with Google Assistant.

By offering these perks, convincing existing Nest users to switch wasn’t going to be an uphill task. Google also ensured that setting up newer Nest products was limited to the Home app, which further hastened the migration.

For instance, the launch of the Google Nest Thermostat marked the beginning of the end of the Nest app. Instead, setting up and controlling it required the Google Home app.

This trend has continued even with the release of the latest Google Nest Cam battery and Google Nest Doorbell battery units. Despite bearing the ‘Nest’ title, they cannot be set up or controlled via the Nest app.

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Google Nest Doorbell Battery

Make no mistake, I have no gripe with switching over from Nest to Home app. In fact, I think having control of all your smart home products from a single app is far more convenient than using two apps.

However, Google has been taking its sweet time to port some of the existing Nest features over to the Home environment.

No denying that the the Google Home app does plenty that the Nest app will never achieve, but there are still some great features that only Nest accounts can access.

One good example is the ability to view live feed on a computer via a web client. As it stands, this function is only available for Nest account holders.

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Quite unfortunate for new Nest Cam and Doorbell owners since the two are limited to the Home app. The story is pretty much the same with Nest Protect, Nest Tag, Nest Guard and Nest Temperature Sensor, which only appear in the Nest app.

The Nest web client also offers extras such as the ability to create timelapses of up to 24 hours of footage and the app also lets you scroll through your 24/7 recordings.

There’s also plenty of negative talk about the UI design of the Google Home app, which most have labeled as a downgrade compared to the Nest app.

Although Google notes that the transition from Nest to Home app is still ongoing, there’s little hope that all the good stuff will make the switch. The least they can do is port over most of the good features sooner than later.

Google-Nest-Cam-Doorbell-battery

Google, by all means, has been slow with the transition from Nest to Home app to a point that Nest/Home smart home products users are getting quite frustrated.

It irks even more knowing that the new Nest Cam & Doorbell units cannot be set up via the Nest app, yet the Home app lacks in terms of features that are available on the Nest app. Hopefully this unnecessary confusion ends soon.

But before then, we’d like to know your opinion on this whole transition saga through the comments section and Twitter poll below.

Update 1 (October 26)

12:19 pm (IST): The poll results and all of you believe that they handled this situation just as expected so not good, not bad.

Update 2 (July 6)

12:06pm (IST): The Google Support team confirms that the transition from the Nest app to the Google Home app is still in progress.

The company says its long-term goal is for Google Home to be the only app you need to manage all of your Google Home and Nest devices.

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Source

However, there are no more specific details about an ETA for the transition to be completed yet. So, the only thing users can do for now is keep waiting.

PiunikaWeb started as purely an investigative tech journalism website with main focus on ‘breaking’ or ‘exclusive’ news. In no time, our stories got picked up by the likes of Forbes, Foxnews, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Engadget, The Verge, Macrumors, and many others. Want to know more about us? Head here.

Hillary Keverenge
2020 Posts

Tech has been my playground for over a decade. While the Android journey began early, it truly took flight with the revolutionary Lollipop update. Since then, it's been a parade of Android devices (with a sprinkle of iOS), culminating in a mostly happy marriage with Google's smart home ecosystem. Expect insightful articles and explorations of the ever-evolving world of Android and Google products coupled with occasional rants on the Nest smart home ecosystem.

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