How to watch your Nest camera's video history on a computer

If you are a Nest Aware subscriber, your camera’s video history  will be stored automatically in the cloud. 

You can watch your camera’s video history on your phone or tablet with the Nest app, or you can use a computer.

To watch the video history on a computer, sign in to your account at home.nest.com. Then select a camera that has a Nest Aware subscription. 

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. Calendar

Click on the Calendar icon to watch video from a specific day. Depending on your Nest Aware subscription, you can go back a certain number of days in your video history. For example, if you have a 10-day video history subscription, you’ll see history for the last 10 days on a rolling basis. If you don’t want to lose certain memories, you can save clips.

2. Time buttons

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: When viewing your timeline in HR or MIN modes, events that happen close together may be close enough to look like a single event.

3. Left and right timeline arrows

The arrows to the left and right of the timeline help you navigate back and forward through your video history.

What the dots and bars mean on your timeline

• Gray dots or bars on your timeline means that your camera detected motion or sound outside of your camera’s Activity Zones.
• Colored dots or bars on your timeline usually mean your camera detected motion in one of your Activity Zones. The color matches the color given to the Activity Zone when it was created. So if you created an orange Activity Zone around the front door, all orange dots and bars on your timeline mean that your camera detected activity in that zone.
• Multiple colored dots inside of a gray line mean that motion was detected inside of two zones while that activity was taking place.
• Dark parts on your timeline
  • If you have an EBR subscription (Nest Aware or Nest Aware Plus), you’ll see dark gray gaps in your camera’s Sightline between events. This is normal.
  • If you have a Nest Aware Plus subscription, after 10 days you’ll see gaps in your camera’s Sightline. This is because the app will remove video that contains no activity, so you’ll only see video clips of activity.
  • If you have a 1st gen Nest Aware subscription, you’ll only see gaps in your camera’s Sightline if your camera was turned off or was offline.
• 
• The white line shows the part of the timeline you’re currently watching.

4. Activity Zones

The Activity Zones  icon beside your timeline lets you create activity zones.

5. Creating or viewing clips and timelapses

The Clips icon lets you create a clip or timelapse or view clips you’ve saved

How to jump to an event

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 or click the New Clip icon to create a clip of the event.

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.

The rewind button will rewind your video by 30 seconds.
The pause/play button will pause and resume your video.
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.
The live button will immediately bring you back to live video. It’s grayed out if you’re already watching live video.
While you’re watching your video history, the LIVE icon in the upper corner is greyed out.
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.