Troubleshoot familiar face detection

Sometimes your camera may misidentify a familiar face as a new face and create another profile of the same person. To fix this, merge the profiles.

 

Note: When you add or change a name of a person in the familiar face library in the Home app or Nest app, the change is also reflected in the other app.

Home app

1. Open the Google Home app .
2. Tap Settings Nest Aware Familiar face detection
3. To add or change the name, tap a face and enter a new name.

Nest app

1. Open the Nest app .
2. Tap Settings Familiar faces.
3. Tap on the familiar face profile you want to name.
4. Tap Name.
5. Give the person a new name. You can use their actual name or enter a description like “mail carrier.”

If your familiar faces library is missing, your Nest Aware subscription may have expired or you turned familiar faces off for all your cameras. Check the status of your subscription and make sure it's active.

Important: Before you change notification settings it’s important to understand how they work. Here are a few key points about familiar face notifications:

• When your camera spots a familiar face, the event includes the name (if any) you assigned to the person.
• When your camera spots an unfamiliar face, it will send an unfamiliar face alert.
• If your camera spots a familiar face and an unfamiliar face at the same time, it will send an alert about the unfamiliar face.
• If your camera’s not sure whether it recognizes a face, it will send a person alert instead of a familiar face alert.
• You might get different alerts for the same person if you have more than one camera and their settings are different.

To learn more about how notifications work for Nest cameras and get instructions on how to change their settings, go to our camera alerts  article.

If you can’t manage your camera’s familiar face detection settings or your home’s familiar face library, it could be caused by the following:

• Your home is in an area where familiar face detection feature isn’t available.¹
• You’ve entered your date of birth into your Google account and are under the age of 13 in the US (or the applicable age in your country).

If you incorrectly entered your date of birth into your Google Account, you learn how to verify your age and re-enable your Google Account in the Google Accounts help center.