Learn about presence sensing & how to manage your data

Your devices use presence sensing to start either your Home Routine or Away Routine. You can check and manage your presence data in the Home app.

If you turn off presence sensing for your home devices and your phone, your Routines and other features that use presence sensing won't know when you leave or come back home, so they won't know when to start. You can still start your Routines manually with the Home app.

If you turn off "Allow this home to use phone locations," but leave your individual phone location on, Home & Away Routines will stop using phones for presence sensing. However, features that use only your phone location such as "Only Ring When Home" will continue to work.

Your devices use presence sensing to determine if you're home or not. When Only ring when home is enabled, incoming calls to your speakers or displays will occur when your phone is at home, but not when your phone is away from home. You can check and manage your presence data in the Home app.

If you're in a home that has Home & Away Routines enabled, turning off presence sensing for your phone in the Google Home app's settings can also disable other features that use your phone's location with presence sensing like Only ring when home.

If selected, eligible devices listed in your presence sensing settings can use their sensors or media state (such as playing, pausing or changing the volume) to help determine if someone is home.

Learn how your smart home devices help with presence sensing.

If you opt in, the Google Home app uses your phone's location to determine when you've crossed over your geofence or connected to your home’s Wi-Fi.

Geofence is a virtual perimeter around your home that you designate when setting up a feature that uses presence sensing for the first time.

Wi-Fi presence lets you add a Wi-Fi network to your home in the Google Home app. When your device connects or disconnects from the home network, it helps determine if you’re home.

Your geofence crossings, sensors on devices in your home, and connection to the Wi-Fi network can determine when to start your Home & Away Routines. This data also helps improve and personalize your Nest-connected home experience. Learn more in the Nest Privacy FAQs.

To enable presence sensing to work properly, make sure that:

• You've set up Home and Away Routines in the Google Home app
• You've enabled your phone in presence sensing settings in the Home app
• You've set location permissions for the Home App on your phone to Always on
• Everyone in your household has enabled their phones in presence sensing settings in the Home app on their own phones

You can also turn off just an individual phone from being used for presence sensing.

Features that use presence sensing may no longer work if you turn off sharing phone locations for a home or your phone in presence sensing settings. For example, if you turn off sharing phone locations, Only ring when home or Home & Away Routines may no longer work.

Enroll your network in Wi-Fi presence

Before you enroll your network in Wi-Fi presence, make sure that:

• Your home network supports WPA2 or WPA3 security
• You can connect to the home Wi-Fi network on your phone

To add or switch to your network:

1. Open the Google Home app 
2. Tap Settings Presence sensing Home Wi-Fi networks.
3. Select Add current network or Switch network if you want to add a different network.

In your Home app's Activity tab, you'll find an indication for every time you entered or left the geofence area. Remember that presence sensing is distinct from the location History feature of your Google Account, and neither feature impacts the other one.

The Home app doesn't track where you are or where you've been beyond tracking whether or not you're inside your home's geofence. Data used for presence sensing and geofence is only used to determine when you come home or when you leave. This data is used for the purposes for which you give permission, and is explained in more detail in the Nest Privacy FAQs.

Presence sensing works best if every member of your household enables their individual phones in presence sensing settings in the Home app. If some members of your household don't use these settings, your devices may not sense that person as being home, even when they are, and your Routines may not work as expected.

For example, if you're the only person in your household whose phone is enabled in presence sensing, and your home doesn't use any other devices for presence sensing, when you leave, the Away Routine will start and turn off the lights in your home. The other members of your household still at home would need to turn the lights back on or manually start your Home Routine.

You can also turn off just an individual phone from being used for presence sensing.

If you turn off sharing phone locations for a home or just your phone in the presence sensing settings, features that use presence sensing such as Only ring when home or Home & Away Routines may no longer work.

In the Google Home app, manage presence sensing by selecting home devices to use, managing phone location permissions, and deleting presence history.

Learn how to manage your presence settings in the Google Home app.

The Home app history will show you and other home members when and why your Home & Away Routines started automatically.

• You can check your own arrivals and departures to the home. You can manage this data in the Home app settings.
• Other members of your home can check when you manually change the mode to Home or Away using the app, your voice, or Nest × Yale Lock.

All data collected by the Home app is subject to the Google Privacy Policy and is handled as explained in more detail in the Nest Privacy FAQs. Please also read Google's commitment to privacy in the home.

Delete presence sensing history

Your home's presence history includes data for all members of your home and all your devices, even the data that isn't shown in your home's history in the Home app. It's stored for 60 days and then it's deleted automatically. You and all other members of the home can also delete it manually at any time from the Home app.

You can only check your own history for when you leave or come home. Only those who have set up Home and Away Routines can delete the home's presence sensing history in the Home app.

1. Open the Home app .
2. Tap Settings .
3. In the "Home features" section, tap Presence sensing.
4. Tap Delete all presence history.
5. Choose Delete.

After you delete your home's presence history, you and all members of your home can check the deletion event in your home's history.

Download your data

You can check a history of data collected by your devices in the Home app and download your data at any time.

Learn more about how to download your Google data.