Keep an eye on your home with the new Nest Aware. Subscriptions start at one low price for all your Nest cameras, speakers, and displays. Get more video history and new intelligent alerts. At Google Nest, we make products that are beautiful, helpful and easy to use. The Nest app is no exception. Control your Nest thermostat, arm and disarm your Nest Secure alarm system, see your home with Nest Cam, and get an alert if Nest Protect goes off – all in one place.
Is Apple HomeKit compatible with Nest? Can I use my iOS device to control my Nest smart thermostat? What about my other nest devices? These are all good questions, so we’re going to cover all that and everything in between.
If the question is whether Nest smart devices such as the famous Nest Learning Thermostat, Nest Hello Doorbell, Nest Cam, and so on— can integrate with Apple HomeKit then, sadly, the answer is unfortunately No. However, you can use and control Nest Smart Devices with our iPhone and Apple products using their app. There is an entire article on the best smart thermostats that work with Apple HomeKit here.
Usually you can install a Nest Cam in just minutes using your smartphone or computer and the Nest Cam installation app. When you download and install the Nest Cam installation app on a Mac (Nest Cam Setup (Macintosh).app it will appear in your Applications directory. Popular camera app Darkroom was today updated to introduce Universal App support, which means that the newest version of Darkroom works on iPhones, iPads, and Macs. It is compatible with Apple's.
Download this app from Microsoft Store for Windows 10, Windows 10 Mobile, Windows Phone 8.1, Windows 10 Team (Surface Hub). See screenshots, read. Shop accessories for your favorite iPad model. Apple Pencil and the Smart Keyboard add versatility to iPad Pro. Take your iPad further with a Smart Cover, Beats headphones, Lightning adapters, Bluetooth keyboards, and more. The app needs a Nest Cam to work and this was also easy for me to set up. In my opinion the investment in both camera and app is well worth it. I had a couple of questions to ask Marko regarding the app’s functionality before and after setting up which I emailed to him - he got back to me straight away and is extremely helpful.
In my office, I use a Nest Cam inside and a Nest Learning Thermostat. I use my phone app (which works with both iOS and Android) all the time to control these Nest smart devices, but we don’t use HomeKit for these activities.
Before moving on, the ideal smart home assistant to work with all your Nest products would be Google Home (found here on Amazon).
Below, we’ll dig deeper into this question and, by the end of this article, you’ll have all you need to know about Apple HomeKit, Google Nest Smart Devices, and everything in between. Also, make sure you check out the Siri to Nest Integration Hack below.
To reiterate, yes, Nest smart devices—or rather, Google Nest devices, more on this later—, can work with iPhones and Apple products: the iPad, Apple Watch, etc. You can, rather seamlessly, control Nest smart devices from these Apple products.
How to do it? Let’s use the Nest Learning Thermostat as an example here, and here is our simple step-by-step guide to doing it:
Voila! Now you can start monitoring and controlling the Nest Learning Thermostat from your iPhone in just three simple steps.
The physical installation of the Nest Thermostat is also fairly straightforward. The package includes mounting screws, plates, and even a Nest screwdriver together with a very comprehensive installation guide. In most cases, the installation project will only take you 20-30 minutes with minor drilling.
And yes, the Nest app works with Apple Watch, and by following the same steps above we can control the Nest Learning Thermostat right from our wrist.
Above, we have established that while we can’t use Apple HomeKit to control Google Nest smart devices—at least for now—, the Nest app for iOs is pretty handy in controlling and monitoring these Nest devices straight from your iPhone.
In fact, Tony Fadell, one of the co-founders of Nest, is actually also a co-founder of the iPhone and has worked on the first three generations of the iPhone.
Thus, even if the Nest App is not a native HomeKit integration, using it is pretty seamless and it’s fairly obvious that the team behind the Nest App properly understood the iOS ecosystem and made the full use of iOS architecture to create a well-designed, intuitive interface.
The Nest app for iOS can:
As we can see, the Nest App is quite well-rounded in its ability to control and monitor various Nest devices from Nest Learning Thermostat to Nest Smart Lock.
The Nest App works with any iOS devices (iPhones, Apple watches, iPads). If you need/want to monitor and control your Google Nest smart devices from your computer (PC/Mac), simply go to the Nest Home website here and log in with your Nest account. Quite recently, Nest also included the integration of Nest App with Apple TV (4th gen or later with tvOS 10.0).
So, with this amazing amount of control and “integration” —albeit not native integration—, do we actually need that HomeKit integration with Nest devices? Let’s dig a bit deeper below.
What about Siri commands? Although it’s not a direct HomeKit replacement, there are iOS apps like Thermo Watch that allows us to control Nest thermostat devices via Siri voice commands. For example, we can tell Siri something like “Hey Siri, increase temperature by 64 degrees” after we’ve set up the Thermo Watch app.
Technically, we can replicateall functions offered by HomeKitintegration via the Nest app in combination with third-party apps. It’s not a native integration, so we’ll need to put in some extra work to configure stuff. Yet, arguably it can work just as well. transmit mac os x download
If you do want a thermostat, smart security camera, smart light, or other smart devices that can directly integrate with HomeKit, however, we do have a lot of viable options from popular and reliable brands like Ecobee, Belkin WeMo or Phillips Smart Hue, among other brands.
A common misconception is that Apple HomeKit is a form of smart home hub or smart speaker hardware, similar to Amazon Echo. Arguably, this is due to a very similarly-named popular product, the Google Home.
In truth, Apple HomeKit is actually a software framework—obviously by Apple and for the Apple ecosystem— that lets us control smart home devices from various brands (that support integration with HomeKit) all in one single dashboard.
So, in practice, with Apple HomeKit we can adjust our smart light device, for example, the Phillips Hue, iDevices smart outlet and Yale smart lock all in the HomeKit dashboard.
We can also create templates for multiple rooms from the HomeKIt, so we can create different environments and ambiance, and change between them instantly with just a single tap from your iPhone or iOS device.
HomeKit, being Apple’s native software framework, can be triggered with Siri commands such as “Hey Siri, turn off all the lights in the Living Room” or “Hey Siri, play my evening playlist in Dinah’s Room”. As we can see, we can make the most of HomeKit’s Room functionality with Siri commands, one of its key highlights.
My guess is that Apple doesn’t play well with Google since Google owns Android, the largest competitor of the iOS platform. Google also owns Nest which launched back in 2011 (purchased in 2014) and is unarguably a smart home pioneer. The same way that Amazon doesn’t always play well with Google, possibly because of some of their direct competition with some of their products and services.
A common misconception is, however, that HomeKit lost Nest integration after Nest was acquired by Google, but in truth, HomeKit was only released several months after the acquisition.
For whatever reason, HomeKit doesn’t offer as many device integrations compared to Google Home (Google Assistant), Samsung SmartThings, or Amazon Alexa. However, recently more and more brands like Ecobee, Phillips Hue, and Logitech—among others— made the jump to integrate with Apple Homekit.
Part of the reason why many brands—including Nest, for now—, didn’t offer integrations with HomeKit may have been due to Apple requiring MFI chipset as a prerequisite for HomeKit integration, and many brands simply didn’t want to make the necessary investments.
Since 2017, however, Apple has lifted this requirement, and now brands can connect with HomeKit with just a software protocol. Yet, we still haven’t heard any word from both Apple and Nest Labs until today.
Free cursor sets. Answering this will be fairly subjective.
On the one hand, a HomeKIt user might argue that an app—no matter how good and seamless function-wise—, is still not as valuable as a true HomeKit integration where we can control everything in a single interface (and Siri commands).
On the other hand, the Nest app for iOS, as we’ve established above, offers a really good set of features that can replace HomeKit integration—function-wise—.
We’ve learned that there’s no direct—or native—integration between Nest Thermostat and other Nest devices with Apple HomeKit.
However, there are plenty of ways to emulate the same functionality by using the Nest app for iOS, combined with other apps like Thermo Watch.
Nest devices, especially the renowned Nest Learning Thermostat, are still some of the best smart devices around especially due to their elegant, minimalist design that will look great in any smart home, paired with their rich sets of features.
With that being said, we shouldn’t dismiss Nest smart devices even without the direct integration with HomeKit. Nest app is really well-built and reliable, and we can easily monitor and control Nest devices via iPhone or other Apple devices.
As of the writing of this articl, no Nest smart devices and products offer direct integrations with Apple Homekit.
This question has been asked ever since the introduction of Apple HomeKit back in 2014, and until today, Apple, Nest Labs, and Google (as the owner of Nest Labs) haven’t really answered with a clear timeline. The most common theory is that Apple and Google are still working on an agreement for the native integration to finally happen.
Ecobee is probably one of the most prominent brands producing smart thermostats that also offer native integration with Apple HomeKit. Honeywell and Emerson Sensi are also honorable mentions.
In my opinion, the ecobee is probably the best option available in the market today. I personally use the ecobee4, but the ecobee SmartThermostat (Click here for current Amazon price) is the updated version.
Fortunately, no. Nest Learning Thermostat and other Nest smart devices (Nest Hello Doorbell, Nest Cam Outdoor/Indoor, etc.) can be controlled via the Nest app for iOS. The only function/feature you don’t get is Siri voice command (see the hack for Nest thermostats above). If you have Amazon Echo(Alexa) or Google Assistant-enabled devices, you can also use them to control the Nest devices.
In our opinion, yes. Although we don’t have a native integration of Apple HomeKit, the amount of control we get from the Nest app, as well as other third-party apps are still sufficient.
This is considering the fact that Nest smart devices—especially the renowned Nest Learning Thermostat—, are among some of the best, well-designed smart home appliances available today.
Alphabet's Nest this week rolled out an update to its app platform that allows owners to stream Nest Cam feeds directly to fourth-generation Apple TV units, while introducing a new video clip creation and sharing feature called 'instaclip.'
Nest is touting video clip creation and sharing, dubbed 'instaclip,' as the app update's main feature addition, but other improvements like activity notifications and a tweaked user interface also arrive for iOS 10 with Nest version 5.9.
As noted in a blog post on Thursday, instaclips can be used to capture and share impromptu holiday moments with friends and family. Powered by subscription service Nest Aware — a requirement for instaclips to work — the feature automatically detects potentially interesting action to create a short clip viewable in the Nest app.
Tapping on the 'clip' icon generates a clip, while pressing and holding the same button lets users customize a clip's length. Instaclips can be uploaded to a customer's online archive, or stored on their iOS device for sharing.
In addition to instaclips, iOS users now get snapshots alongside activity alerts, a feature previously limited to Android devices. Those with Nest Aware are also receive short video clips viewable within a notification pane. The app also includes a new button that switches Nest Cam video feeds and history between fullscreen and portrait viewing modes without forcing users to rotate their iPhone.
Finally, fourth-generation Apple TV owners can download the new Nest tvOS app to access to live Nest Cam video feeds on the big screen. The app supports multiple homes linked to a single account, and is capable of displaying four live camera feeds on a single screen. Nest Aware customers also have access to history archives with activity indicators.
Nest on Thursday said Apple TV functionality was 'coming soon,' though the app and service appear to be live in the tvOS App Store.
Nest has yet to integrate HomeKit support into its product lineup, which would bring live video viewing and other functionality to Apple's home automation hub.
Nest for iOS and tvOS are free downloads from their respective App Stores.
AppleInsider has affiliate partnerships and may earn commission on products purchased through affiliate links. These partnerships do not influence our editorial content.