2nd generation Google Nest Protects can automatically test their speaker and horn monthly with Sound Check. During Sound Check, each Nest Protect in your home makes a short sound and listen with its microphone to confirm that its speaker and horn are working. If Sound Check notices that you’re home, your Protects will wait until you’ve left to run the test.
What happens during Sound Check
When enabled, Sound Check will run once a month. If you have more than one Nest Protect, they'll all run a Sound Check at the same time. The whole test is over in less than five seconds.
You’ll be sent an app notification about five minutes before Sound Check runs.
You can choose to skip the check or let it run. If you choose to skip, it will automatically try to run again in about a month.
Manually test at any time
If you ever want to run a manual horn and speaker test, you can run a Safety Check-Up. This tests everything that Sound Check does and more.
Change Sound Check settings
Important: When you change the Sound Check settings, it will update settings for all Protects in your home.
- On the Nest app .
- Select a Nest Protect.
- Tap Settings Sound Check.
- Set your preferred time range (e.g. 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.) for Sound Check to run, so that it will run when you’re likely to be away from home and won’t disturb you.
If you don’t want Sound Check to run at all, switch off Allow monthly Sound Check.
You can also turn off notifications if you don’t want to get a message before a Sound Check test.
What to do if Sound Check finds a problem
If Sound Check can’t verify that a Nest Protect’s speaker and horn are working, you’ll get an app notification, and your Protect’s light ring will glow yellow during Nightly Promise.
Run a manual Safety Check-Up test as soon as possible to confirm that each Protect can speak and sound the alarm. It's important for you to verify that you can hear each Nest Protect in your home. Double check by running the test a second time. If a Nest Protect doesn’t speak or sound the alarm during Safety Check-Up, replace it immediately.
Note: If your Nest Protect’s speaker doesn’t work, you won’t hear its voice during a Heads-Up alert or Emergency alarm, but the horn will still be able to sound during an Emergency alarm.
If a Nest Protect is listed as offline or doesn’t report test results, it may be having trouble connecting to Wi-Fi or the Internet. It may also be that your Protects are too far apart to connect to each other (more than 15 m or 50 ft ).
Google doesn't receive Sound Check recordings
Sound Check audio isn’t sent to or stored on Google servers. During Sound Check, your Protect’s microphone listens to the alarm sound for less than five seconds.