Watch Nest cameras and doorbells video history on a computer

If you're a Google Home Premium subscriber, your Nest camera's video history is stored automatically in the cloud. You can watch your Nest camera or doorbell's video history on your computer, phone, or tablet.

To watch the video history on a computer, sign in to your account at home.google.com or home.nest.com and select a camera or doorbell that has a Google Home Premium subscription.

Learn about Nest camera timeline

Your camera or doorbell's video history on a computer includes a timeline that helps you scan your recorded video to find important events.

In Google Home for web, it's to the right of the video player.
In the Nest app for web, it's at the bottom of the screen.

Your timeline serves 2 major purposes:

It shows you when an event happened in your video history. Motion or sound are examples of camera events.
It lets you quickly go through your recorded video history so you can jump straight to events and see what happened.

To watch different parts of your video history, simply click the part of the timeline you'd like to watch from. Your video immediately jumps backward or forward and starts to play from the point you clicked.

Learn about Google Home for web

Cameras tab

The Cameras tab helps you navigate between your cameras and doorbells. It also displays the video feed from all cameras and doorbells at the same time.
Click the camera's tile to show the feed in full screen. It also shows that your camera or doorbell's timeline or event history, based on what Google Home Premium subscription you have.

Create, save, and view clips

If you use the Google Home for web, you can check your camera or doorbell's video history and save events as video clips to your computer.

Learn how to create, save, and download video clips with Google Home for web.

What the dots and bars mean on your timeline

Dots or bars: Your camera or doorbell detected motion or sound outside of your device's Activity Zones.
Dark parts on your timeline:
- If you have an event subscription (Standard or Advanced plan of Google Home Premium), it shows gaps in your camera and doorbell's video history between events. This is normal.
- If you have an Advanced plan of Google Home Premium, after 10 days it’ll show gaps in your camera and doorbell's video history. This is because the app removes videos with no activity, so it only shows video clips of activity.
- If you have a Nest Aware (1st gen) subscription, it only shows gaps in your camera and doorbell's video history if it was turned off or offline.
White line: Shows the part of the timeline you currently watch.

Jump to an event

Hover your mouse over an event for a preview of that event. Click an event to go to it.
Drag the timeline up or down to quickly fast forward and rewind. Release to play.

Learn about Nest app for web

Calendar

Select Calendar

to watch video from a specific day. Depending on your Google Home Premium 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.

Time buttons

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

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.

To show a shorter period of time in greater detail, including the exact start and stop times of motion or sound events, click SEC. Alternatively, click HR for a wider overview of your timeline.

Left and right timeline arrows

The arrows positioned to the left and right of the timeline are essential navigation tools. It allows you to easily move forward and backward through your video history.

Activity Zones

You can create custom Activity Zones for your camera or doorbell for different types of activities that you want to be notified about. Click Activity Zones

to create activity zones.

Creating or viewing clips and timelapses

You can create, view clips, and timelapses. Click Clips

to create a clip or timelapse or view clips you've saved

What the dots and bars mean on your timeline

Gray dots or bars: Your camera or doorbell detected motion or sound outside of your camera or doorbell's Activity Zones.
Colored dots or bars: Your camera or doorbell detected motion in one of your Activity Zones. The color matches the color given to the Activity Zone when it was created.
Multiple colored dots inside of a gray line: Motion was detected inside of 2 zones during that activity.
Dark parts on your timeline:
- If you have an event subscription (Standard or Advanced plan of Google Home Premium), it’ll show gaps in your camera’s video history between events. This is normal.
- If you have the Advanced plan of Google Home Premium, after 10 days it’ll show gaps in your camera or doorbell’s video history. This is because the app removes video with no activity, so it only shows video clips of activity.
- If you have a 1st gen Nest Aware subscription, it only show gaps in your camera or doorbell’s video history if it was turned off or was offline.
White line: Shows the part of the timeline you're currently watching.

Jump to an event

Hover your mouse over an event for a preview of that event.
Click an event to go to it.
Select New Clip .
to create a clip of the event.
Drag the timeline left and right to quickly fast forward and rewind. While dragging, snapshots appear above the timeline. Release to play.

Player controls

Hover your mouse over your video to reveal the playback controls.

The rewind button rewinds your video.
The pause/play button pauses and resumes your video.
The fast-forward button skips your video ahead from its current point. The button is grayed out if you've already watched the live video.
You can forward to the end to bring you back to live video. The button is grayed out if you've already watched the live video.
While you watch your video history, LIVE in the upper corner is grayed out.
You can click LIVE to jump to the present. LIVE is blue when you watch a live video.