- Improvements are heading to the Google Home app
- Camera feeds should be more reliable and quicker
- The updates are rolling out for Android and iOS devices
It’s not been the best of times for the Google Home ecosystem, what with a crescendo of user complaints rising about buggy devices and apps in recent weeks. Google is now at least bringing some improvements to the Google Home app for Android and iOS, connected to Nest cameras and doorbells.
In a somewhat apologetic post on the Google Nest Community message boards, a member of the Nest team outlines the improvements. While the reported bugs with Google smart home kit aren’t addressed directly, they are alluded to.
“We also wanted to take a moment to thank you all,” the post reads. “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.”
If you do own a Nest camera of some description, here are five of the most notable upgrades heading your way.
1. Faster previews
Camera previews will now show a cached image from a previous live view: while it means the view might be slightly out of date until it’s fully loaded, it does mean you’ll be able to identify which camera is which more quickly if you’ve got several set up in the app.
2. Improved gestures
Gestures have been simplified, so you can now switch between the timeline and events views with a single swipe. Expanding and collapsing live views, and dismissing camera feeds, are also now controlled with one swipe, making it easier to get around the app.
3. Better notifications
Notification previews have been improved as well, so on both Android and iOS you’ll see a static thumbnail together with a large animated preview , the intention is that you get a better idea of what the alert is about without having to open up the Google Home app.
4. Accurate reporting
Google says that the Google Home app is now better at reporting whether your cameras are online or offline, so you know the status of every camera at all times. The same under-the-hood optimizations should mean live streaming performance is better too.
5. Smoother performance
Speaking of performance, further tweaks made by the Google Home team are going to reduce latency, reduce the likelihood of “no video available” errors, and ensure camera streams can be recovered more quickly when they’re switched off and then back on.
These improvements come on top of previous upgrades added by the Google team, which they also mention in the same post: they include increased clarity for videos, a more seamless timeline experience, and a quick seek feature for jumping through video clips.
As well as these software enhancements, it looks very much like new hardware is on the way, as four new Nest devices have recently leaked. Despite lots of evidence to the contrary, it seems that perhaps Google hasn’t forgotten about the smart home after all.
