Local recordings are missing basic application features

[robbyj]

First and foremost, I understand that Arlo as a company is trying to push for everyone to buy their subscription service Arlo Secure. I get it. With this in mind, I think there are some fair points to raise to Arlo as they still offer products that support offline, or local recording features. In December 2022 I purchased Three Pro 4 cameras, an Essential doorbell and most importantly an Arlo Pro Smart Hub. 

I went through the steps to set up the Arlo Pro Smart Hub for local recording, attaching an external hard drive, port forwarding my router, assigning a static IP to the Smart Hub and using a VPN for remote access. After finishing the process I waited for the 'Arlo Secure' trial that you are basically forced to enable when you buy a new camera to end. I knew things like 'activity zones' would be disabled and 'thumbnails' for recordings and 'motion alert types' would not work with local recordings, but what I did not expect was basic features of the application to simply be disabled for seemingly no other reason but to bother users into buying a subscription to Arlo Secure.

1. Only the account owner can see local recordings.

  I can't think of a logical reason for this besides purposely trying to inconvenience people who use local recordings. Arlo has a well defined user permission section in the application that allows you to add other 'Administrator' users, however there is no permission that would grant a user access to local recordings. 

2. Local recordings do not show up in your 'device section' like cloud recordings do. 

  No matter what you do, after you open the Arlo Secure app, select devices and click on a camera to see the most recent events, no local recordings will display.

3. Local recordings do not show up in the 'feed' like cloud recordings do.

  The 'feed' section of your application will always remain empty even in local recordings are perfectly operational. 

4. You can not access your local recordings from a web browser, only through the phone app. 

  Again, I can't think of a logical reason for this besides purposely trying to inconvenience people who use local recordings. 

5. The only way to access your local recordings is to be the account owner, open your Arlo Secure application, navigate to 'Smart Hub' from the devices section, select 'Storage settings' (why would recordings be under 'storage settings'?) And then from here you can see a list of most recent events. 

I would like to hear from Arlo on if and how they plan on addressing any of these items or if any are being worked on currently. Thank you

[Joel2024]

I had their cloud membership for a few years now. 

after discovering this, i will be returning the new purchased camera and smarthub. 
they seem to limit the app functionality for no reason at all. 

very unethical business practices.