Extend your Nest doorbell’s tone all around your home
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
If you have yourself a Nest video doorbell, whether the older Nest Hello – now known as Nest Doorbell (Wired) – or the Nest Doorbell (Battery), there are plenty of features within the Google Home app to help you get the most out of it. You can set up Quiet Time so your doorbell doesn’t interrupt your kids sleeping or your cosy night in, and you can use Quick Responses to reply to visitors if you’re not home.
You can also set up Visitor Announcements if you have any Google Assistant speakers, meaning your doorbell won’t just ring on the doorbell itself and the indoor chime, but on all the Google Assistant speakers around your home if you want it to. For times like Halloween and Christmas, setting up Visitor Announcements is particularly fun as if you are using Spooky Sounds or the festive jingles during those holidays, your speakers will also play those sounds.
Read: How to change your Nest doorbell’s ringtone to spooky Halloween sounds
Here’s how to set up Visitor Announcements for your Nest video doorbell and Google Assistant speakers, and how to turn them off.
What you’ll need
- The Google Home or Nest app
- A Nest video doorbell
- Google Assistant smart speakers
The short version
- Open the Google Home app.
- Tap on your Nest video doorbell feed.
- Tap on the three lines in the top right.
- Tap on ‘Voice Notifications‘.
- Toggle ‘Voice Notifications’ on or off depending on your preferences.
As mentioned, turning on Visitor Announcements for your Nest video doorbell means you will get alerted across all of your Google Assistant speakers and displays when someone comes to your door and presses your Nest doorbell. Your Google Assistant speakers will need to have been set up within the Google Home app, along with your Nest video doorbell, for this feature to work.
When on, any Google Assistant speakers and displays will play the sound of your doorbell, and if it’s a familiar face at the door, they will alert you to who is at your door too if you have saved their name in your Familiar Faces section and you pay for the Nest Aware subscription. For any connected Assistant displays, the feed from your Nest Doorbell will appear on the screen too when a visitor presses the doorbell.
It’s worth mentioning that we’re calling these announcements Visitor Announcements, but Google has seemingly changed the name of them to Voice Notifications in the Google Home app so that’s what the steps now say. If you’re using the Nest app, they remain as Visitor Announcements just to complicate things.
That’s it! Once on, your Google Assistant speakers will let you know when someone is at the door.
FAQs
No, if you turn Visitor Announcements on, all Google Assistant speakers will make the sound of your doorbell ringtone and tell you “someone is at the door” or the person who is at the door if it is a familiar face and you have a Nest Aware subscription. You can turn Do Not Disturb on for some speakers if you don’t them to make the announcement.
If you are using the Nest app to control your Nest video doorbell instead of the Google Home app, you can still turn Visitor Announcements on. Open the Nest app > Tap on your doorbell in the feed > Tap once on the feed > Tap on the settings cog in the top right corner > Tap on Visitor Announcements > Toggle it on.
