Arlo App is useless, please fix!

[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.

[Hangarwatch]

I found another bug.  When dealing with browsers Chrome and IE11 there is a bug in each.  In Chrome, I cannot edit my Mode by clicking on the little arrow to the right side.  In IE I can.  However in IE, I cannot view anything in my Library.  It just spins, saying loading. 

[PerryArlo]

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@JessicaP wrote:

Our intent with the app update is to streamline the user experience to allow users to focus more easily on the device list as our portfolio grows. The resulting design alerts users only when the battery is low – the battery icon will always appear on the home page when the battery is at 25% or less. A yellow icon will appear to represent 25% battery life, and if the battery falls lower than 25%, it will change to red. The same goes for a weak WiFi signal. However, for our wire-free cameras, the plug icon will always appear on the screen when the device is plugged in.

For more information on these changes, take a look here: What enhancements are included in the Arlo app release version 2.6.0 or higher?

Arlo Development Team

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That just isn't true. The battery icon and WiFi icon do not currently change color. I know because I have one camera witgh 20% battery, and there is no status icon at all on the main page, and the one on the device details is still black. The same goes for weak WiFi.

There are a bunch of other issues, like

- Activity Zones no longer being all shown at once, which makes it hard to have them overlap properly. 

- When you play back videos from the library, you can no longer dismiss the top and bottom footers, so parts of the video are blocked. You used to be able to tap the video during playback and they would disappear or come back. Not it just causes the pause button to appear or disappear.

- It's a major hassle for people with many cameras to have to click through to each camera to check their status.

- Labels should be ABOVE each camera, not below. It is much more logical that way.- Alerts are sporadic and inconsistant. Sometimes I get motion alerts and sometimes I don't. I have new videos in the library without having gotten an alert. Not sure if that has anything to do with the App update or something else on your back end.

Please read through the comments in this thread. There are a lot of issues with the latest App, and you have a very unhappy user community.

[Waymar]

The update has definitely not streamlined my experience on my iPhone app. I want to see the battery at a glance. Not have to rely on the brief flash I have seen telling me that the battery is low when I open the Arlo app on my iPhone. I do not check my cameras on my laptop.

The devopment team need to acknowledge the community comments. We are intelligent people and are fully aware of your changes. As Arlo users we absolutely do not agree with your opinion about any of the changes streamlining or improving our use of the app.

As we have all clearly said we want the old system reinstated.

[paddos]

@JessicaP. @JamesC

Your design intent was good. Simplier is better. It's your execution of simple that failed. I have not seen one post that supports the new revision as being simpler. Can you describe any change made from 2.5.5 to 2.6.0 that made any routine use of your system easier?????

Why 2 clicks to get to device page when you only need 1. Three dots should go directly to device page without asking to cancel. Can cancel on device page. Is two clicks to get to device page simpler that one click? Even better, how about keeping system status indicators on home page for zero clicks. But no ... your definition of simple is multiple clicks?

Why put system info that users need in particular for multiple camera applications on a device page that already has system info. Move was redundant and means 3 clicks for every camera to check system status. Is 30 clicks to check 10 cameras simpler than just schrolling screen?

Why remove ability to tile screen shots so you user can see more than one camera.? Is the new blown up screen view with fabulous rounded corners that displays one view at a time easier than being able to see multiple views. ... is that simpler?

Why eliminate the ability to see recordings by camera by clicking on recording icon. Is having to filter by camera easier that having the recording icon by camera?

Why change the speak button to press for on with visual feedback to a press and hold with no visual que that speaker is on ... is that easier?

I could continue to list the changes made from 2.5.5 and pretty much every thing your UI/UX Engrs changed made the app more difficult ... certainly not easier.

How much more feedback or obvious examples of "not making it simple" to you need to see to understand.

Design intent was noble but as has been your history, your execution was terrible. And the worst part is your unwillingness to even acknowledge you messed up.

[Retired_Member]

The previous app still required one tap of the “gear” icon to see battery percentage. New version should be something like this: launching the app I should see battery percentage right away. So no, you have not streamlined anything! Stop this BS we are not dummies. 

[Iamspartacus8]

Thanks for your response..  Its Something.

I for one can live with the battery or Wifi only illuminating when Low.   However the scrolling simply to view each camera vs. the classic view (b4 upgrade or like reflected on Web) is much more functional.

In fact if my view was that of the one illustrated on the IOS App Store Preview, I would be less hurt in the  posterior.  But what i have today is less than functional for anyone with more than 2 cameras. 

[Jtxnet]

I would also add that as shared by many other users we not only now have been enduring this major UI issue with the new version, but it has been a total distraction from very important functional ongoing bugs.  For example: in the case of the iOS app for months the built in notification alert (both visually and the sound) is unreliable to the extreme and I rarely receive iOS notifcation yet all the email alerts come through just fine.  Consequently I don’t get an activity alert until notified on the email appearing in my inbox. . . .a process that adds multiple minutes of delay to receiving the alert.

Your customers take very seriously the security aspects of these products and having an extra few minutes now added to the notification time because the app IOS notifications are crippled is a major end user potential safety issue. 

Please focus on improvements that REALLY matter.  

Thank you!

[paddos]

@Jtxnet

Thanks for important comment. There are several functional bugs going unaddressed.

See the same push notification issue. Do u have your email set to " push" versus "fetch" notification on ur iPhone? With the push notification not working, I was able to speed up alert by creating an iCloud email account that I could push emails to me versus using an aol account that had to be set to fetch. Now get emails within seconds of trigger. Helps compensate for Arlo push issue.

[Jtxnet]

@ Paddos

Great point ....thanks for bringing this to the attention of the community. On my end I do have my email set to push which definitely helps on all email notifications , but when the Arlo native app was functional with iOS notifications were nearly instant. Obviously when an intruder trespasses on our lot notification time is precious. BTW the new Arlo lights integrate nicely with the cameras, but suffer with the same non-existent or massively delayed notifications in iOS

[lico]

Don't know if I am in the correct topic. Since the update I still cannot get some  camera's to motion trigger. Have the rules changed? Any others having this problem? Is the app not commuicating?

[mikeg279]

Look the app is terrible. No live video. Who wants a system without live video. Give us back the old app.

[Wirelezz]

When attempting to view a Cam in Live View in full screen using Chrome browser on my laptop I'm only seeing half an image. The bottom half is a white screen.  When using Firefox the full screen image is normal. So what's up with Chrome? Anyone else seeing this?

[AvA110]

@JessicaP. @JamesC

The issues with the new App is beyound just UI issues. Users only see UI changes and assume that all issues are related to that. While the new app seems to have huge relaiability issue in both app runtime and server comminication. Some of these issue doesn't even seem to be client side issue but either from app server interaction layer or the server APIs. We dont know if Arlo also changed (updated) any of those APIs at the same time with releasing the new app version which I assume they did to add support for the line of products.

Some of the very critical issues are:

1- The UI is not syncing with the actual events from server.
ex. we can see live view label on top of the video but the video is frozen or not yet loaded
2- Notifications are missing. We can see a motion recorded but never recieved any notification

3- the battery icon visibility and color is not always consistant and in sync with the real battery status

4- App seems to fail fast with any server side error. No retries when a server call fails for any reason. This causes the users to experience an error message for ex when try to get a live feed from a camera quickly and when cliking on the live view again we get the live feed working on second or third try. It seems like the App need to at least perform couple of retries before failing

The above issue also applies to video reply.

5- Multiple live views are not possible anymore which was very helpful feature. Is it because Arlo wanted to save on their server workload? It doesn't seems to be a technical issue as it used to work before. It is more like a strategic decision and if thats the case Arlo need to clarify it with their customers to prevent any confusion 

[mperdue]

I’ve only had the cameras for about a month but it seems the latest iOS app is useless. All the extra steps to accomplish what used to be simple things coupled with the fact that I can no longer view live video makes the devices absolutely useless. Unfortunately I’ve had the product too long to be able to return it.

[Gabanda]

Can you please fix the app? What is the point of having a state of the art camera if the app does not work?  I am extremely disapointed by the product. I would not recommend it to anybody.  I am about to return my Arlo Camera.

[JP4freedom]

I agree. I used to be able to turn on and off a camera on my app to get a live look.  Not so now.  I can turn it on but have to exit out of app to turn it off. Why the hell did you take away the start and stop buttons under each camera.  Bring back the previous app. 

[AncientGeek]

I had the same problem with the Apple TV app yesterday when I checked it out.  I could start cameras, but I couldn’t see anyway to stop them without going to Library or closing the app.

the good news there was that I could configure the number of cameras I wanted to see at one time on the screen.  1, 6 or 12.

I had 2.5.5 on my 12.9” iPad briefly yesterday.  I thought I had turned off AutoUpdate, but after using it for a while all of a sudden all of my apps updated anyway....and 2.5.5. Was lost.

Hey, iOS, users....that made me wonder if we could wipe our iPads and restore them from a backup taken prior to 2.6.0.  For me that would be 10/24/2018 or previous to that date.  That might be an option.  Brute force, but possible, if you are good with backup discipline.

[Hudsonite]

I agree with this thread. The newest firmware is vastly inferior to what we had before. Please restore the old version. This new one is terrible.

[ArthurP]

Agreed.  Wish I had the old app back.  The missing AC power notification took three taps on 4 cameras to dismiss them all!  I deleted all my zones, it was so annoying.  Now all my feeds have an icon alterting me to set up zones!

[mnstevens]

It doesn't on mine. I get a battery icon when I first open the app. But about 3 seconds later it's gone. All the icons are yellow and frankly I can only see the first 2 cams before it disappears anyway. So shows nothing. Same icon on the cam that is plugged in for testing. It's like it's trying to retrieve battery status and failing. 

Arlo Executives have sent all the engineers shirts. If you would like to get in on that action you too can get your very own Arlo official engineer shirt here: https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Worry-Production-Computer-Programmer/dp/B07FSWT92H

[AncientGeek]

I’m back on 2.5.5!  It took time and effort, but I erased my iPad Pro, restored it from a backup prior to the 2.6.0 downgrade, turned off automatic updates and downloads (just to be safe and then manually applied 161 of my 162 needed updates to avoid updating the aarlo app.  I am now happily looking at a UI that is truly useful.  I’ll keep my backup iPad on auto update, so I can monitor progress on restoring the app to its prior utility, but I won’t update my primary iPad until that happens.  It is too painful to use.  Hopefully Arlo manage to will have an epiphany and restore the UI to what we had before along with fixes to actual problems that are more deserving of their scarce resources.

[DCrusher1]

Okay I found another problem with app that I don’t like 

1 that the battery is not display with out going to device setting EVERYBODY HAS BEEN TICKED ABOUT

2 just realize this, it doesn’t show if it is in armed or unarmed either with out going to mode 

both of these icons use to be showing on the device dashboard this sucks fix this.    

I know other are TICKED about it.   I like to see both the battery and mode icons back just for quick reference 

[trickytcamgeek]

Following the “upgrade” of the iOS App from 2.5.5 to 2.6.1, Arlo has become effectively useless as a security system if you are using an iPad Pro.

Now it is possible to see only one camera at a time. If you are trying to monitor 20 cameras, at the same time as a security system, that’s useless. Before we could see 16 cameras simultaneously.

Also the live view simply does not work on an iPad Pro since the so called “upgrade”. If you are trying to monitor a child or a dog, that’s useless.

Other changes flagged in these forums are also backwards steps. An example is the battery monitor which has been removed from the main screen. Users with 20 cameras could previously see at a glance the status of all the camera batteries. Now that takes 60 clicks and 5 minutes.

After 11 days, Arlo has failed to acknowledge the problems. Users are universally condemning the upgrades from the fully working 2.5.5 version of the App to version 2.6.1, yet the silence from Arlo is deafening.

Sites like this one, Amazon, Twitter, and the Apple App Store are awash with negative feedback in the last 10 days. The AppStore rating has dropped from five stars to 2.5 stars in 8 days. The star rating continues to fall towards 1 star which is the worst rating you can give. You can’t give zero stars.

Consumers, users of your product can’t be fobbed off with half-baked comments like “our developers are looking into the issue”. We need a proper statement that acknowledges that you know there is a problem and tells us what you will do about it with a timeline.

In the meantime, please give us back the old version of the iOS app ver 2.5.5.

Has anyone contacted the directors of Arlo? How about customer relations, or sales, or investor relations?

I guess the email addresses are on the website of Arlo.

[AncientGeek]

@trickytcamgeek:   I was think of writing the CEO this morning.

In the meantime, consider what I did as an option.  I backed up my iPad (just in case my idea didn’t work). Then I erased it (keeping my data plan settings) and restored it from a backup I made prior to the app downgrade.  Then I immediately turned off auto app updates and downloads. (I reviewed these settings in advance so I could do it quickly). The process took quite a while and I was initially concerned the apps would be restored at the now-current versions, but I was happily rewarded with app versions from the date of my backup.  I then had to manually update all of my other apps, but I left Arlo at 2.5.5.  It is WONDERFUL to be back to the multi-device view with all of the status icons in full view at a glance and the ability to do a quick filtered view of library recording with a single touch of the number EVEN IF IT IS ZERO!  Even with the bugs in 2.5.5 it is so much more usable and efficient for me.  Many thanks to the design team that built and delivered 2.5.5.  May they come back soon.

[Zegor]

Look at the lengths your users are going to so they can "undo" this terrible Arlo app update you guys have rolled out. Fix it for goodness sakes!