topic Re: Revert the Arlo Secure App Upgrade in Arlo Secure

Revert the Arlo Secure App Upgrade

mclaughlin-arlo — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 21:26:30 GMT

Hello. I unfortunately upgraded my Arlo App and have had fits trying to set it to follow pretty simple schedules:

Home / Day: Turn off everything but 1 camera

Home / Night: Turn on everything

Away: Turn on everything

The new setup for schedules and automations makes my head explode. I think I've read enough community posts (which have had really thorough answers, thank you) to mostly make sense of the options, but overall the user experience of scheduling in the app is really poor, complicated, confusing, and backwards in my opinion. I don't really recall having any issues in with the same functionality prior to these changes. If Arlo has a better place to share this type of feedback please advise.

Best regards.

Re: Revert the Arlo Secure App Upgrade

StephenB — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 00:14:04 GMT

@mclaughlin-arlo wrote:

I unfortunately upgraded my Arlo App and have had fits trying to set it to follow pretty simple schedules:

Home / Day: Turn off everything but 1 camera

Home / Night: Turn on everything

Away: Turn on everything

Are you looking for tailored advice? Or just giving feedback on how difficult scheduling is with "Feed"?

Re: Revert the Arlo Secure App Upgrade

Cmoo — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 00:35:22 GMT

This upgrade SUX! On top of being charged more, the app will not allow you to setup your devices individually. The instructions are terrible and customer support is even worse. Give us the option of reverting to the previous version until you have figured out how to fix this cluster!

Re: Revert the Arlo Secure App Upgrade

Cmoo — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 00:38:30 GMT

I attempted to get tailored advice and the customer support person I spoke with provided no help at all. At the very least produce a video and send it to everyone whose account was upgraded showing how to perform all of the capabilities of the previous version.

Re: Revert the Arlo Secure App Upgrade

mclaughlin-arlo — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 01:03:13 GMT

Ideally, I'd like the app to be reverted to its previous version. Assuming that is not an option, I am sharing feedback for the product management team and wasn't sure were best to put it. The responses to similar posts provided enough guidance, I think, to sort of make it work. The recent app/scheduling changes though are so bad that it has converted me from a Arlo Secure promoter to a detractor.

When Home: Run on schedule

When Away: Turn everything on

The above use case cannot be supported.

Re: Revert the Arlo Secure App Upgrade

alex_loo — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 01:29:22 GMT

I think the worst show-stopper is lack of enough modes to support real-life scenarios. Users end up struggling with setting up in the new world, still with time schedule in mind --- which makes the whole experience even worse.

Alex

Re: Revert the Arlo Secure App Upgrade

mclaughlin-arlo — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 01:38:34 GMT

Yep. There is a 2 hour window where every dog in the city gets walked behind my fenceline. But there isn't enough Modes, to your point, for me to carve our a unique schedule during that window. We lost a lot of schedule flexibility with Arlo's changes on top of the confusion introduced. Hopefully they will consolidate the similar feedback I've found in multiple posts and recognize they need to do some usability testing and also map out various schedule patterns to support. It sucks feeling locked in given how much I invested in my cameras.

Re: Revert the Arlo Secure App Upgrade

alex_loo — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 03:09:41 GMT

@mclaughlin-arlo wrote:
Hopefully they will consolidate the similar feedback I've found in multiple posts and recognize they need to do some usability testing and also map out various schedule patterns to support.

They won't. I can tell ARLO people are reading this forum, but they won't bother to facilate this (actually in a way helping themselves).

Alex

Re: Revert the Arlo Secure App Upgrade

jguerdat — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 14:07:42 GMT

It would seem that your schedules are simple enough. Your initial needs were posted as:

Home / Day: Turn off everything but 1 camera

Home / Night: Turn on everything

Away: Turn on everything

That seems to indicate you want both schedules as well as geofencing although a later post talks about just schedules. Let's start with schedules:

1) Create a schedule that uses Arm Away, which has rules for all cameras in it, to start at, say, 10PM.

2) Create a schedule that uses Arm Home, in which you have created a rule for only one camera, at 6AM

There's no stop time for any schedule - a different schedule turns off the first one and starts a different mode.

As for geofencing, things get a bit trickier since the schedules can override GF settings. @StephenB has worked out a solution that I don't use for various reasons but I believe works like this:

1) Edit Arm Home so that all cameras have appropriate rules there.

2) Edit Standby so that only one camera has a rule.

3) Create your schedules as above but use Arm Home for nighttime and Standby for daytime. (Arm Away will only be used for GF)

4) Edit Arm Away to ensure all cameras have rules. At the bottom, disable your schedules so they never will work when using GF.

5) Set up GF to use Arm Away for Leave.

6) Set up GF to enable your modes via Add An Action, Enable/Disable an Automation.

@StephenB correct me if I have this wrong.

You may also want to create a schedule for that time period when the dog-walkers are in force to eliminate recordings or, at least, notifications, followed by yet another schedule to resume your normal daytime.

Re: Revert the Arlo Secure App Upgrade

mclaughlin-arlo — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 14:15:52 GMT

Thank you. Very thorough like many responses I read to other posts.

The genesis of my feedback is this feels incredibly complicated and obtuse, unnecessarily so? It seems I could just have one schedule and Geofenching could override it to All On when gone, and revert back to the schedule when home. I think Arlo Secure before the update was much more inline with this simpler approach and took a major step backwards.

Re: Revert the Arlo Secure App Upgrade

StephenB — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 14:36:09 GMT

@mclaughlin-arlo wrote:

Ideally, I'd like the app to be reverted to its previous version.

That won't happen.

@mclaughlin-arlo wrote:

When Home: Run on schedule

When Away: Turn everything on

The above use case cannot be supported.

Often it can. But it depends on the details of your schedule. If you want tailored advice, tell us what cameras you want armed at various times.

Re: Revert the Arlo Secure App Upgrade

StephenB — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 14:37:25 GMT

@Cmoo wrote:

I attempted to get tailored advice and the customer support person I spoke with provided no help at all.

Post the details on another discussion thread.

It gets very confusing when I am trying to help two people at the same time on the same thread.

Re: Revert the Arlo Secure App Upgrade

StephenB — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 15:37:40 GMT

@jguerdat wrote:

@StephenB correct me if I have this wrong.

@mclaughlin-arlo wants all cameras armed when away.

When someone wants that, I always recommend reserving "Arm Away" for that use. Then set up the schedule to switch between "Arm Home" and "Standby" (and never switch to "Arm Away"). So my recommendation is not the same as yours.

I would instead modify "Standby" to enable just the one camera, and make sure "Arm Home" and Arm Away" arm all the cameras.

https://kb.arlo.com/000062777/About-Arlo-Routines-Modes-Rules-and-Automations

Then create a schedule that uses "Arm Home" at night, and "Standby" during the day.

Finally set up geofencing to switch to "Arm Away" when you leave, and either "Standby" or "Arm Home" when you arrive.

I've posted (and reposted) automation screenshots - including one a couple of minutes ago here:

https://community.arlo.com/t5/Arlo-Pro-3/Arlo-pro-new-update-automation-not-working/m-p/2434617#M17177

Re: Revert the Arlo Secure App Upgrade

mclaughlin-arlo — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 15:45:55 GMT

Hi @StephenB , please don't take any of my critical feedback as aimed at you. Your responses have been prompt and thorough. Agree or disagree, my feedback is for Arlo Secure product management. Their recent changes introduced complexity and debatably reduced functionality (I could be wrong on this one but don't think I am).

I think I largely implemented what you suggest above and just have the gap of when I come home, my cameras are sometimes on during the day (or I could reverse the issue and have them not come on when I return at night).

Re: Revert the Arlo Secure App Upgrade

StephenB — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 15:53:27 GMT

@mclaughlin-arlo wrote:
The genesis of my feedback is this feels incredibly complicated and obtuse, unnecessarily so?

I asked initially whether you wanted help or just wanted to leave feedback ...

On the feedback, it is crystal clear that

users are struggling to understand how automations work. So they are just too complicated.
many users need more modes to get the schedules they want (and Arlo removed the custom mode feature they need).
geofencing "arrive" simply can't be made to work properly with the new interface, because there is no way to tell arrive to "just follow the schedule".

"Library" didn't have the gaps that are in "Feed", but many users struggled with the combination of scheduling+geofencing with "Library" also.

Neither @jguerdat nor I work for Arlo - so I'm not taking any of this feedback personally. I'm just helping folks get something reasonably close to the functionality they need.

Re: Revert the Arlo Secure App Upgrade

JamesC — Wed, 08 Jan 2025 18:43:19 GMT

We understand there have been several challenges with the new user experience. The feedback posted in the community is absolutely appreciated. The concerns here, amongst others, are being consolidated internally and passed up to product management for review.

As we move forward with the new user interface we will keep community up to date on future changes and plans to make the experience aligned with user expectations.

Thanks,

JamesC

Re: Revert the Arlo Secure App Upgrade

AikaneKai — Wed, 08 Jan 2025 21:38:24 GMT

@JamesC wrote:
...
As we move forward with the new user interface we will keep community up to date on future changes and plans to make the experience aligned with user expectations.

In the mean time, Arlo has completely screwed their existing user base and their own reputation even further. If they don't actually fix these issues and soon, their business is going to suffer irreparably to the point where they may no longer exist.

This new software version never should have been released. Once it was, since it's clearly broken, it should have been reverted immediately.

With the number of available resources for providing feedback to potential customers, users are not silent about the good, the bad and the ugly. Arlo has clearly moved into the ugly phase.

Re: Revert the Arlo Secure App Upgrade

55Willy — Sun, 12 Jan 2025 23:25:14 GMT

I sincerely hope SOMEONE with ARLO is reading this as I have to say that upgrading if you can call it that was

a huge mistake on my part, have had nothing but problems since switching. Had I realized I would no longer

be able to schedule individual cameras & the degree of difficulty navigating the system would be I obviously

would NOT have done it ! PLEASE PROVIDE A WAY TO REVERT TO THE PREVIOUS VERSION !! Believe it or

not while not perfect it worked well and was a LOT easier to understand !

D Williams

Re: Revert the Arlo Secure App Upgrade

55Willy — Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:08:57 GMT

Well here we are a day later after talking to support TWICE & wasting almost the entire day I still can't set the

schedule for more than ONE camera, after setting a schedule for the 1st camera when you go to the next,

the system will not accept it ! To anyone at Arlo; THER'S A SERIOUS PROBLEM WITH YOUR SOFTWARE !!

Re: Revert the Arlo Secure App Upgrade

StephenB — Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:54:07 GMT

@55Willy wrote:

Well here we are a day later after talking to support TWICE & wasting almost the entire day I still can't set the

schedule for more than ONE camera, after setting a schedule for the 1st camera when you go to the next,

the system will not accept it ! To anyone at Arlo; THER'S A SERIOUS PROBLEM WITH YOUR SOFTWARE !!

You schedule the system, not individual cameras.

Can you tell us the details of the schedule you want? Then we can try to help.

(Note this is a user-to-user forum - I do not work for Arlo).