Dear Arlo Product Management & Develoment

[Waymar]

Please can you return the basic camera to the position you had it before this update.  I liked to be able to see at a glance which camera had a low battery or had just been activated. It was previously visible on the devices screen without having to open each camera.

[AncientGeek]

“a” flaw?   Boy, if there was only one flaw, we’d all be extatic!

[sybersnot]

Go to Facebook and search for Arlo Smart Home. Post your complaints there. I did and I got a response pretending they knew nothing about it but would pass it on. More of the public who haven't bought them yet will see the complaints if you post them there. Maybe then they'll take notice and fix this.

[Jtxnet]

AncientGeek:   I should have clarified that my battery life experience is with the original “Arlo Wire Free” cameras that use the CR123a single use lithium cells.   I have found that outdoor temperature, brand of cell, and lot to lot variations make a difference in battery life  (obviously not nearly as significant as usage), but the rapid fall off from 60% battery level down is very predictable.   Clearly with these batteries on these cameras the battery level percentage indicated in the Arlo app does not correspond in a linear fashion to remaining battery life.

So back to this UI issue . . .without a fast convenient way to see battery level those with multiple cameras will inevitably end up with dead cameras until they can get to convenient battery replacement opportunities . . .unless of course they want to make it a daily event to do 45 clicks to check battery levels (in the case of 15 cameras) when it was just previously a quick scroll thru the camera view to see if any batteries were below 80%.

Hopefully along with getting us back to the original UI soon the senior management at Arlo will ask: “how did this happen?” and take corrective action to improve their processes.

[Rattvader]

Succinctly and well put my friend. It’s a major PITA. So glad I didn’t upgrade my iPhone to iOS 12. At least on it I can still live stream and have the old dashboard. The old expression “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” applies well here. I woke up Sunday morning and it had automatically upgraded on my iPad. Thought it was great until I actually used it!!!

[jamesglewisf]

LOL! I tried to edit a post to correct a spelling, and the board just deleted the post instead. Nice.

BTW, I just found out on the iOs 2.60 version you can no longer rotate your iPhone to see a landscape version of the Camera Positioning. That means you get a tiny little picture of it at the top of the portrait screen. So, I have a landscape camera image shrunk down to fit the portrait-only view on the screen. And yes, I checked to make sure that my iPhone screen was rotating. And yes, there is no full-screen button like when you do a live view of the camera.

Every time I replace a battery, I have to re-position the camera. I used to pull it up on Camera Positioning, snap an iPhone screen capture to memorialize the view, change the battery, and pull up Camera Positioning again to make sure it matched my screen capture. Of course the one screwy thing about the prior version of the app was that I couldn't switch back and forth between my screen capture and Camera Positioning without having to re-start Camera Positioning every time. 

A real enhancement to the user interface would have been to allow you to do some kind of screen capture in the app during camera positioning, and then when you went to position the camera again after the battery change, show how it lined up compared to the screen capture. That would be an enhancement.

Again, do the developers even use the app?

[emt803]

I just tried mine and it roared like it use to. iPhone xs

[PeaSoup]

The android app updated for me automatically.  It feels like its faster, which is nice.  But I really miss seeing the battery indicators.  The indicator now shows only if the battery is low - why not keep it the way it was?  If I'm going to bust out the ladder to change one camera's battery, I often do several others that are almost low at the same time.  I have 9 cameras, so now I have to click on each device on by one.  PITA.

[jamesglewisf]

I’m not sure what you mean by “it roared like it used to.” I don’t see a newer iOS version of the app (newer than 2.60).

[AncientGeek]

Jamesglewisf:  I have no problem with the full screen rotated view of the live feed.  If I hit the play icon in the middle of the image and then after the live view starts, I hit the arrows in the upper right hand corner.  The image immediately expands to full screen and rotates.

I am on on iOS 12.0.1 and V 2.6.0 of the Arlo app.

Also, I checked about a dozen of my battery power cameras...with a great deal of effort due to the stupid changes to the app...and found my cameras are not using battery power any faster than normal.

Also, under the old UI, I would look at the camera image before I changed the battery and just do an iOS screen shot of the dashboard images, if needed...then when I changed the batteries, I could compare the two images to be sure I had the camera positioned similarly to before the battery change.

[SolarDude]

On Android you can download the older versions of the program to roll back to the last version of the app, ok not sure if you can do this on iOS.

For example the Android Arlo software versions are available via a site like this.

I do not like the new Android app update interface either.

You guys can find the older versions of the Arlo app online and install them instead of the newest updated version.

I just did that by downloading the previous Android ApK from this place. After you download you will need to install the apk file and sometimes you need to give Android permission to install programs that are not from the app store which is simple to do.

Here is where I found the older software versions. There may be iOS versions you can download also to get back to the old software until they fix the latest update.

https://www.apkmonk.com/download-app/com.netgear.android/4_com.netgear.android_2018-08-08.apk/

[pluckytree]

Commenting on my own original post. In landscape, there's a header and footer view that BLOCK THE VIDEO AND YOU CAN'T GET RID OF THEM. I've never seen anything like it.

[emt803]

my appoligies that was my iphone version

[jamesglewisf]

AncientGeek:

Yeah, I guess I could use live view in landscape, I was talking about “Camera Position” under device utilities.

[jamesglewisf]

Emt803:

I’m still confused. This thread is about the iOS 2.60 version sucking eggs. It is not anything like the previous version. Maybe yours hasn’t upgraded yet.

[emt803]

I meant to say I was running the latest iPhone version with the new arlo update. I think I even threw myself off 🙄.

Do anyone have the arlo smart primer ?

[ralfyguy1]

Lemme ask you this: Are you Netgear half wits drunk all the time, or are you on Meth? There is no way you all are sober at any given time. This train wreck of an app now is UNREAL!

[Pdarby]

Agreed that ARLO needs to roll back this update.  All I get is a frozen picture, live sound, you have to scroll thru the cameras instead of seeing all five cameras on one page, no battery level display, etc.  Very poor planning on ARLO for not properly testing this update prior to releasing it.  Very disappointed!

[Lemondog7]

ARLO, when are you going to roll back the update?? This new version is terrible.

[paddos]

Arlo return to prior release. Impossible to fix the improved 2.6.0! Way to many screw ups to think you can improve from this version. As users we should stop trying to suggest what they need to do to make it right. The only way to make it right is start over with prior release and fire the UI/UX genius who released 2.6.0!!! I knew turning off auto updates on my iPhone would pay off. You would think after last May's disaster when battery life was destroyed and fixed four months later that heads would have rolled. ... same incompetent team, same lousy outcome.

[Greyhound123]

My enhanced user experience = not ONE of my cameras working. I've tried resetting, unplugging, re-syncing. I'm down. Completely down. I spent hundreds on this system and recommended it to friends and family and now it's completely useless!

[Riskit]

You're joking aren't you. I wish I didn't buy arlo 2 now. Just another stupid toy. Not at all professional. Status icons gone, access to library ridiculous. Just give me the old app back

[Jesseroon]

This is a general comment, but the new upgrade that happpened this month is absolutely terrible. Every time I sign in getting alerts that my camera isn’t connected to AC power, direct link for recorded videos on ea camera has disappeared next to the camera itself and must be accessed by sorting through all cameras and the overall video picture seems to be difficult to and lower quality. Not a good upgrade guys. Just thought I’d let ya know.

[Zegor]

Completely agree. The app upgrade is shocking. I hate it now. Previously, I was able to see - at a glance - the status of each camera (battery, wifi strength, motion and audio status, etc.). I was also able to see if the USB hard drive was getting full. Now, I have to navigate to all SIX cameras individually to get this detail - why? Who thought this was a good idea? And I missed one day of USB recording because the USB hard drive was full.

I'm dumbfounded as to why you'd go back in functionality such as this. Don't understand it one bit.

[Zegor]

No - sorry, it hasn't been enhanced. If it takes you more than twice the time to perform tasks you previously had at a glance, the upgrade is not an enhancement. It's a terrible update and should be rolled back.

It's like me coming into your house, taking your TV away, then saying I've "enhanced" your home viewing experience. Yes, now you have to go to your neigbours house to watch the news, but your experience is "enhanced". You can thank me later.

[dfloth]

Not sure how to give feedback so I will do it hear. Why did netgear make the app less user friendly in the latest update? It’s horrible. You use to be able to access a camera’s recordings at any time from the device page. Now you have to go to the library then filter. So lame!!!