Learn about presence-based automations

Create automations in the Google Home app or as a scripted automation in Google Home for web that can use presence sensing. These automations automatically adjust your home devices when someone comes home and when everyone's away.

Presence in the home is determined using input from your phone's location (if you opt in), sensors in your smart devices. This means you don't have to manually turn your devices on and off or rely on a fixed schedule. You can decide which devices, including your phone, will determine presence.

Learn how to set up smart devices in the Google Home app.

Automatically, with presence sensing

Important: Not all third party devices are able to contribute to presence sensing, so only eligible devices will be available to opt-in for presence sensing in the Google Home app.

To determine when to start, presence-based automations can use presence sensing. You can choose which devices, if any, can help determine if someone's home or everyone's away:

• Home Device sensors: These devices have sensors that can help determine if someone is present in the home. For example by sensing motion, detecting touch or voice commands, media playback, volume adjustments, and more.
  • Nest thermostats
  • Nest Protect (Wired)
  • Nest × Yale Lock
  • Smart speakers
  • Smart displays
  • Google Nest Wifi point
  • Smart TVs (including Google streaming devices)
  • Streaming boxes
  • Streaming sticks
  • Game consoles

Learn how each device helps sense presence.

• Phone location: With the Google Home app, your phone can use a combination of GPS, cellular, and Wi-Fi signals to help sense if you've left or returned home. The Away automation starts after the last person in the home's phone leaves home. The Home automation starts when the first person's phone returns.
  • This feature works best when everyone in the home shares their phone location. Otherwise, the presence-based automation might not start when someone who isn't sharing their phone location arrives or leaves.
  • If you also use device sensors for presence sensing, their input may affect when your home switches to Home & Away. For example, if your thermostat senses motion around the time people leave, it may delay the switch to Away to help ensure no one's still home.
  • You can add a home network for Wi-Fi presence. Once your phone connects or disconnects, the signal is used to determine if everyone's away or someone has returned.
  • We've implemented this feature with your privacy in mind. The Home app doesn't continually record your phone's exact location like a GPS navigation app for driving. The app only needs to know 2 things: whether you've left or come back.

Learn more about presence sensing for presence-based automations.

Save energy

Presence-based automations can help you save energy on the smart devices they control.

• Nest thermostats: The Away automation can adjust the thermostat to energy-saving temperatures with the Eco when away setting when everyone leaves home. The Home automation restores more comfortable temperatures when the first person returns.
• Smart plugs, switches and lights: The Away automation can automatically turn off these devices when the last person leaves home.

Make your connected home even more convenient

When you set up presence sensing with your presence-based automations, they start automatically when it's convenient for you:

• Presence-based automations can automatically turn on or off your smart plugs and switches, even if you forget.
• Presence-based automations can adjust your Nest thermostats to the right temperature with Eco Temperatures.

Set up presence-based automations

Set up presence-based automations with the Google Home app. To use presence-based automations, Nest app users will need to migrate their Nest Account to a Google Account.

Important: Before you set up a presence-based automation, you need to set up presence sensing in the Google Home app.

You'll need to use the Google Home app to set up presence-based automations.

1. Migrate your Nest Account to a Google Account, if you haven't already done so.
2. Set up your smart devices in the Home app, if needed.
3. Follow the steps in the Google Home app to set up a presence-based automation.

If you use both the Nest app and the Google Home app, presence-based automations will work seamlessly with the Nest App's Home/Away Assist.

Differences between Home/Away Assist and Presence-based automations

Important: To create additional presence-based automations, the user can use presence starters or conditions.

The Google Home app's presence-based automations work similarly, with some improvements. To learn more on how to change your Nest devices’ behavior, refer to Home/Away Assist.

Home/Away Assist is available to you if you have a non-migrated Nest Account. It's also available if you migrate to a Google Account and use your Google Account with your Nest devices and services.

• The Google Home app and Nest app work well together. You can use either app, or both.
• No matter which app you use, the home is always in either Home or Away. If you switch your home using one app, that change will show up immediately in the other app.
• Your phone can only use geofence from one app at a time. When you enable geofence in one app, it will be automatically disabled in the other app.
• Some settings are specific to each app. Check the table below for more details:

	Home/Away Assist in the Nest app	Presence-sensing automations in the Google Home app
Requires migration to Google Account (if you started using the Nest app before August 19, 2019)
Can adjust Nest thermostats, cameras, and doorbells
Can adjust Nest × Yale Lock
Can adjust smart lights, plugs and switches
Can use info from Nest sensors to determine presence
Can use info from Google Nest speakers and displays to determine presence
Can use info from media devices to determine presence
Can use phone location to determine presence	through the Nest app	through the Google Home app

We take your privacy seriously. Your phone location information will be used for the purposes for which you give Google permission. You can turn it off anytime.

Google's commitment to privacy in the home guides how to uphold the commitment to respect your privacy in the home. Collection of your phone's location data is off by default, and you must expressly choose to turn it on after reviewing relevant information about what data is collected, how it's used, and controls available to you.

Learn how presence sensing works and how to check and delete your presence history data.

For further details about how Google handles your data when you use Google Nest devices and services, refer to Google's privacy policy and the Google Nest Privacy Help Center page.