What you need to know
- The original Nest Cam Indoor now works with the Public Preview version of the new Google Home app.
- Users can join the Public Preview at any time but will need to wait for the automated prompt to migrate their existing Nest cameras.
- Nest Cam Indoor supports the latest camera history experience and pinning to the favorites tab in the Google Home app.
- Nest Cams transferred to the new Google Home app will no longer work in the old Nest app, but the transfer process can be reversed at any time.
Google announced on Thursday that owners of the original Nest Cam Indoor can now opt to move their existing cameras from the old, decrepit Nest app to the shiny new Google Home app with one caveat: you'll need to be enrolled in the Public Preview in order to be eligible.
Even after doing that, you'll need to wait for an automated prompt to migrate your existing cameras before they start to work in the new Google Home app. Google says it might be a few weeks before all users have this ability. If you aren't enrolled in the Public Preview of the Google Home app, you can learn how to do that here.
We were first told back in May that Google would be adding the ability for users to bring older Nest cameras into the new Google Home app so they wouldn't have to juggle multiple apps. In fact, that's the entire reason the Google Home app exists: to remove the need to have several apps to manage a single smart home.
Older Nest Cam Indoor cameras enrolled in the new app can use the app's refreshed camera history UI, which features a vertically-scrolling history of camera events familiar to folks who love the old Nest app. You can also pin the camera to your favorites tab, and the feed will show up among the rest of the smart home controls you've favorited as you can see in the image above.
If you choose to migrate your old Nest Cam Indoor over to the new Google Home app, you won't be able to access it via the old Nest app. Existing recordings and camera history will still be in the Nest app but your camera will now only be accessible through the Google Home app.
If you decide you don't like the new Google Home experience, you can always roll back to the old Nest app. Just remember that you cannot use the camera in both the Google Home and Nest apps at the same time. You'll need to pick one, but this at least gives users the opportunity to try out the new experience.
It's hard to believe that it's been eight years since the original Nest Cam Indoor launched. But it might be even harder to believe how long it's been since Google began reworking its Google Home app experience to incorporate all of its smart home products under one roof, including migrating support for its older Nest cams.
It took roughly one extra month for this migration phase to begin, and Google is still working on including all Nest Cam Indoor users over the next few weeks. After that's done, the company will begin including Nest Cam Outdoor users with the same process.
Google says its goal is to include all possible Nest products in the new Google Home app with relatively few exceptions — Nest Secure being one of those exceptions.
Why wait for your old cameras to eventually migrate when you can swap them out for newer, better ones, instead? The new Nest Cam (battery) lasts for months on a single charge, processes AI-based object detection locally, and even sports free 3-hour video storage.
