I woke up at 7am yesterday to find two of my Nest cameras listed as offline. After hours of troubleshooting and hard resetting the cameras to get them working again, I realized the problem was a peculiar one on Google’s side. Hundreds of Nest Cam owners have reported their cameras offline over the past week, but Google hasn’t notified the owners or even posted the issue on its website. Nest service status page.

Most of the reports come from the UK or countries across Europe, but all mention that the Google Home app shows the cameras as offline, when they can actually still record events. With both cameras, I couldn’t watch a live feed, but would gladly record them while I tried to fix them. Factory resetting the cameras got them back to full functionality and some Nest Cam users just had the cameras come back to life hours later.

Google seems to be aware of the ongoing issues as the company’s Twitter support account acknowledged the problem earlier this month. Oddly enough, Google hasn’t updated its own Nest support site to notify owners of the “offline” Nest Cam issue. After resetting my cameras, I noticed the problem resurfaced briefly last night, and others are still waiting for their own Nest Cam devices to appear as online in Google Home.

We’ve reached out to Google to comment on the Nest Cam’s issues, but the company didn’t respond in time for publication.

Separately, I had to have Google replace my Nest Learning Thermostat last month, after it decided to stop connecting to my Wi-Fi just a few months after the original setup. The problem returned again this week on the replacement unit, so I’m waiting for another unit to get it working again. The Nest thermostat Wi-Fi issue has been an ongoing issue since at least 2020, with units randomly going out and requiring Google to replace them. I’m starting to wonder how smart Google’s smart home devices actually are if they can’t reliably connect to a Wi-Fi network.