If you are a Google Nest Aware subscriber, all of your Google Nest camera’s video will be recorded automatically to the cloud.
To watch your video history on your computer, sign in to your Nest Account at home.nest.com. Then click on a camera that has a Nest Aware subscription.
Note: You can also watch your video history on your phone or tablet.
While watching your video history on a computer, you’ll see a timeline at the bottom of the screen. The timeline helps you quickly scan through all of your recorded video so you can find and watch all the important things that have happened.
Your timeline serves two major purposes:
- It shows you at a glance when an event happened in your video history. Motion or sound are examples of the kinds of events your camera takes notice of.
- It lets you quickly go back and forward through your recorded video history so that you can jump straight to the action and see what happened.
Here’s what the timeline looks like:
To watch different parts of your video history, simply click on the part of the timeline that you’d like to watch from. Your video will immediately jump backward or forward and start playing from the point you clicked.
Let’s take a look at the timeline’s different parts: the numbers in the image above match the numbered text below.
| 1. Click on the calendar icon to watch recorded video from a specific day. Depending on your Nest Aware subscription, you can go back a certain number of days in your video history. 2. Use the HR (hour), MIN (minute), and SEC (second) options to control the scale of the timeline. This changes how much time is currently shown across the timeline. MIN is the default view. If you want to see a shorter period of time in greater detail, including the exact start and stop times of motion or sound events, click on SEC. Or to see a wider overview of your timeline, click on HR. Note that when viewing your timeline in HR or MIN modes, events that happen close together may be close enough to look like a single event. |
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3. The arrows to the left and right of the timeline move your whole timeline back and forward. Use these if you want to change the part of your recorded video history that your timeline is representing.
4. Highlighted parts of your timeline represent activity events like when your camera detects motion or sound. The gray color means that your camera detected audio or motion. If you’ve created any Activity Zones, motion detected outside of your zones will be gray.
5. Colored parts of your timeline represent when your camera detected motion in one of your Activity Zones. The color of the highlight matches the color of the Activity Zone where the motion happened. So if you created an Activity Zone around the front door and colored it purple, all purple highlights on your timeline mean that your camera detected motion in the front door Activity Zone.
6. Multiple colored dots inside of a gray line mean that motion was detected inside of two zones while that activity was taking place.
7. The dark parts of your timeline represent recorded video. If you have a Nest Aware subscription, everything your camera sees is recorded to the cloud. If there is a period of time that is not recorded, such as if the camera was turned off or if there was a connectivity issue, that period of time will be shown as a dotted line instead of a solid one.
8. A grey activity with a single colored dot at the beginning shows you an activity that has taken place in multiple zones, one marked as “visible” on your timeline, and the others “hidden”. You can choose which zones are visible and which are hidden in your Activity Zone settings.
9. The white line shows you the part of the timeline you are currently watching.
10. The square icon to the right of your timeline lets you create activity zones.
How to set up and use Activity Zones >
11. The movieboard icon to the right of the activity zone icon lets you create a clip or timelapse.
How to create a video clip or timelapse from your camera’s video history >
| Hover your mouse over an event without clicking. A small preview window will appear, showing you what was happening during the event. Click on an event to jump straight to it and see what happened. |
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You can also drag the timeline left and right to quickly fast forward and rewind. While dragging, snapshots appear above the timeline, so you can see what’s happening. When you release, the video will play at normal speed.
Player controls
Move your mouse over your video to reveal the playback controls.
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The rewind button will rewind your video by 30 seconds. |
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The pause/play button will pause and resume your video. |
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The fast-forward button will skip your video ahead from its current point by 30 seconds. It’s grayed out if you’re already watching live video. |
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The live button will immediately bring you back to live video. It’s grayed out if you’re already watching live video. |
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While you’re watching your video history, the LIVE icon in the upper corner is greyed out. |
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You can click the LIVE icon to jump to the present. When you do, the icon turns blue to let you know you’re watching live video. |
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