Nest App Gains Automatic Door Detection and Better Notifications With Animated Previews

An update to the Nest app is rolling out today, bringing with it a new feature that lets Nest Cam Indoor and Nest Cam Outdoor automatically detect doors within their field of view, further allowing users to set these thresholds as "Activity Zones" with warning-based notifications attached to them. The feature will be available only to those who have the company's $10/month subscription service Nest Aware.
Specified Activity Zones have been part of Nest for years, but required users to manually draw the areas that they wanted a Nest Camera to detect. With the door detection, Nest will intelligently find and mark a new door-based Activity Zone and then notify the owner, who can then choose to keep or get rid of the zone. Nest said that the new door detection abilities have been made possible thanks to the company's deep learning algorithms that have recognized patterns over time.

Nest Protect owners will also receive improved alerts -- with a connected Nest Cam, owners will get live video notifications when smoke or dangerous levels of carbon monoxide are detected. The company said the update is "another way Nest products work better together."

An example of Nest's new automatic door detection feature
Another part of the update, also exclusive to Nest Aware subscribers, is the introduction of rich notifications on iOS 10, letting Nest Cam owners glimpse an animated preview of the camera's video clip whenever action happens in the Activity Zone of a door. Android owners are also getting preview notifications, as well as a way to add shortcuts to favorite Nest products on the Android desktop.

Nest said that it hopes these feature tweaks and updates will "cut down on unwanted alerts and make the ones you do get more helpful." Nest is available on the App Store for free. [Direct Link]