Your phone location and sensors in supported Google Home devices can help determine whether or not someone's home, which means these signals, working together, can help determine presence inside the home. This feature is called presence sensing. Presence sensing can help your home devices adjust to your needs when you are home or away.
This article explains what presence sensing means, how it happens, how phone location data is used by the Home app to enable presence sensing, and the controls and choices you have.
Your phone uses geofence to detect whether or not you're home, and it can only use it from either the Home app or the Nest app at any one time. When you enable geofence in one app, it automatically gets disabled in the other app. If you're using the Nest app, learn about Home/Away Assist instead.
If you opt-in, the Home app will use your phone's location to figure out when you've crossed over your geofence, a virtual perimeter around your home that you designate when setting up a feature that uses presence sensing for the first time.
Your geofence crossings, combined with sensors on devices in your home, can determine when to start your Home & Away Routines. This data also helps improve and personalize your Nest connected home experience. Learn more in the Nest Privacy FAQs.
For the geofence to enable presence sensing to work properly, you'll need to make sure that:
- You've set up Home and Away Routines in the Home app
- You've enabled your phone in presence sensing settings in the Home app
- You've set location permissions for the Home App on your phone to Always on
- Everyone in your household has enabled their phones in presence sensing settings in the Home app on their own phones
In your Home app's history, you'll see an indication for every time you entered or left the geofence area. Remember that presence sensing is distinct from the location History feature of your Google Account, and neither feature impacts the other one.
The Home app doesn't track where you are or where you've been beyond tracking whether or not you are inside your home's geofence. Data used for presence sensing and geofence is only used to determine when you come home or when you leave. This data is used for the purposes for which you give permission, and is explained in more detail in the Nest Privacy FAQs.
Presence sensing works best if every member of your household enables their individual phones in presence sensing settings in the Home app. If some members of your household don't use these settings, your devices may not sense that person as being home, even when they are, and your Routines may not work like you expect them to.
For example, if you're the only person in your household whose phone is enabled in presence sensing, and your home doesn't use any other devices for presence sensing, when you leave, the Away Routine will start and turn off the lights in your home. The other members of your household still at home would need to turn the lights back on or manually start your Home Routine.
Turn presence sensing on or off
- Open the Google Home app
.
- Tap Settings
.
- In the "Home features" section, tap Presence sensing.
-
Turn Allow this home to use phone locations on or off.
.
.You can also turn off just an individual phone from being used for presence sensing.
If you turn off sharing phone locations for a home or just your phone in the presence sensing settings, features that use presence sensing such as Only ring when home or Home & Away Routines may no longer work.