Nest Protect Won't Connect - Troubleshooting Problem and Answer 

And Still after 2 years from your original video - your advice is still helping people keep their sanity! Thank you for this information. I spent far too long to try and get my nest protects to link to my new wifi address…I had not taken into account the second nest protect would be interfering. Sorted them both out pronto after seeing this video. THANK YOU !

For those wondering this also works with wired Nest Protects. I was about ready to to give up after two days of trying to connect, resetting apps and networks, and doing hard resets on the products itself. It blows my mind how difficult it was to find this solution, but thank you for making this video. I hope someone finds it quicker than I did so they can avoid a mental breakdown!

You're a GENIUS! We purchased a condo and it came with 2 Nest Protects and I spent hours trying to troubleshoot. I only tried to connect 1 of the 2 and had no idea what was the issue. Your video saved me hours of potential troubleshooting. THANKS!

Jason, Thanks for putting together this video. I have spent an entire day trying to figure out why my 2 old and 1 brand new Nest Protect devices were not connecting to the Nest app. Actually, 2 of the old one lost connection a long time ago. After watching your video , I followed and all clicked. I started from scratch and reset to all 3 devices to factory default settings and add one by one . All 3 Nest Protect detectors are now connected to the Nest App. My next step is to figure out how to connect to Google Home App. Thanks you so much for your help

Thank you! Wish I had seen your clip before I wasted many frustrating hours. I have four generation 1 Nest Protects and one Nest outdoor camera. Got new internet provider. Found I had to FIRST connect the camera to the internet and had to use the 2.4 ghz connection. Only then could I connect the four Nest Protects. I ended up disconnecting all four Nest Protects and reinstalling them one by one. Worked like a charm. Thank you again!

Great advice. This fixed my problem and saved me a week of screwing around with returns, etc.

You’re a GENIUS!!! Thank you for giving me my life back! I don’t understand why it’s so hard to sync.

Archer - Thank you, you nailed it! I was fighting with my protects for two days. I have 7 protects after renaming and changing my wifi passwords. Just as you described, I had a bad actor that was preventing my others from getting back on line. I eventually disconnected all of them, deleted them from my nest account and one by one reinstalled them. I got to the very last install and the bad actor showed up. I took the batteries out of the bad actor and problem solved. Great work!

Thank you, Mine have not been connected for months because i got frustrated and gave up. Now I just got all three to set up and work. Thanks!

Thank you! I almost gave up! The battery trick worked and you made my day! Greatly apprecaiated.

Just wanted to THANK YOU for this video! This works for other Google devices as well. I spent 2 hours last night trying to connect my new Nest Thermostat 2020 to my wifi with no luck. I reset the thermostat multiple times and even did a factory reset twice. I reset my router a few times and couldn't for the life of me figure out why every other device I have (including multiple Nest Mini speakers and 2 Nest Hubs) were connected to my wifi just fine! Stumbled across your video and decided to give your advice a try. I disconnected all my other Google devices from wifi, did another factory reset on my thermostat and bingo! The stupid thing connected to my wifi immediately! I then went back around reconnecting my other Google devices one by one and everything is now working smoothly! THANK YOU so much for saving me from chucking this thermostat off my balcony!

So I have been wrestling with almost the same problem. I had a power outage and 3 of my 6 Generation 2 Nest Protects went offline. I tried everything like you did numerous times. Then I found your post and tried unplugging 2 of the Nest Protects ones still online. That didn’t help. Then I unplugged my Nest Thermostat and tried again. After a few times it worked. Got all my Nest Protects back online. Thanks so much. I was giving up hope and almost ready to purchase new ones.

Thank you so much. I paid someone $250 and couldn't figured it out. I did exactly what you said and it works

Huge help. Batteries out and factory reset the old units, . . . . . install the new units, then re-install all the old units. Looks like a lot of us have had this problem and I wonder why NEST hasn't addressed this more formally. Search after search until I finally found this video and went from there. Thanks.

Thanks so much for your help. I have 10 Nest protects in my house and was at the point of throwing them all out. I had to take the batteries out of all ten and start fresh with a factory reset but they all worked in the end.

Thanks so much for this video! I've wasted hours trying to get my smoke detector connected after a power outage and it just wouldn't connect with the other one. I used your method and it worked right away by connecting to a different device such as my Nest Doorbell. I wished Nest support would have troubleshooting tips like you provided in this video!

You should work for Nest support team lol. Best solution I have ever seen in the help videos ever. Thank you. For me the similar issue happened with version one nest thermostat vs new 2nd gen nest smoke alarm.

I really liked your solution because it was different than everything else I've seen. I too have spent hours on this. I've tried at least 25 times! In my case, I'm not dealing with a new product, but an old product that was misbehaving, so I erased its data and have tried to add it back to my account. Unfortunately, even with some tweaks, your solution didn't work for me. After the first fail, I tried removing the batteries in the assisting product and reinstalling them. After the second fail, I tried removing and reinstalling the batteries in the unit I'm trying to add, but all to no avail.

You saved me a lot of time and grief thanks

TY for this helpful video; I had several hard-wired Protect devices and the first one wouldn't connect. Inspired by your vid, I restarted the wifi router, and then tried to connect to another of my new Protect units; thankfully, that one worked, thus allowing me to piggyback connecting the others off of that one.

Thank you. I did not have to remove the batteries. I just pushed down the center button for 10 to15 seconds so the device can factory reset and it worked. You will have to factory reset all of them.

Hi Jason, thanks for making this video to explain the issue. You have saved my almost $175 Canadian. My basement Nest protect dropped from the network. I tried everything possible to rejoin the network but no luck. I was thinking that I would need new unit since wifi was not working. Luckily, I found your video and did exactly as you explained. I was able to connect it back in two minutes. Thank you so much.

Thank you very much. You safe me a call to google thinking I had three faulty units. The people that disliked this video need some serious help

Thank you saved a major headache!

Hey Archer, Had a similar issue with nest protect...Got new router. Have exsiting equip; 3 protects (2G), 2 thermostats (3G). installed/connected thermostats w/ no probs. 1st protect continued to attemp to connect assist with farthest themostat. could not after several days of attempts. After lots of searches, finally saw your vid. Excellant info!!! I finally disconnected/removed the far themostat. Assist connected to closest themostat and was succsessful. Not sure if this affected the success, but I removed the batteries from to other 2 protects also. connected remaining protects, then lastly the far thermostat. Your vid pointed me in the right direction. Well done and thanks.

Hi All, Good video player by Jason. Well I got frustrated in updating the wifi for the Nest Protect. So I reset my two Nest Protect and then set them up again. Wala ..... it worked.

Thanks for your info after months of frustration finally connect my Nest to WIFI. by the way I have 2nd generation.

I also tried to connect my Nest Protect after getting a new wifi6 router and the SSID changed for my house. It absolutely refused to let the Nest thermostats assist in the setup. I thought it might be the Protects not wanting to connect to my band steering 2ghz/5ghz signal, but when I logged into the Nest app with a different gmail account and tried installing them without the help of the Nest Thermostats, they connected to the wifi perfectly. So I had to go back to my main account login, delete the Nest thermostats from the app… install the Protects, then install the thermostats again. That worked perfectly and the Protects worked on my band steering combined SSID network perfectly.

thank you for your video, I had a mega problems installing the Nest Detectors , after a new router installed! In my Case I had to un install the Nest thermostat , before it self installed etc with the APP! thanks

Good to know. Thank you.

I fixed a totally unrelated problem thanks to your video, although I watched it because I am about to install a house full of NP 2nd Gens. But this reminded me that my phone has to be on my 2.4GHz SSID while I am adding sensors to my Nest Thermostat because that's the SSID that the Nest Thermostat is on. So, even though it's nothing to do with this, thanks! And I'm sure you will have saved me a lot of anger, swearing, and Amazon returns by the time I get all of my Nest Protects installed.

Had this exact issue when I changed my WiFi name and my new doorbell would not connect either. Was driving me totally crazy for weeks (I gave up and decided Id try another day). I took all the smoke detectors down, pulled the batteries, deleted all the devices from the app, hard reset the detectors and started from scratch with one smoke detector. WHOOP! It worked and the new doorbell then would connect too. Not sure why this is never mentioned in all the troubleshooting articles. They all blame the router settings, etc.

Suggestion: Instead of just raising your various alarms and dropping them out of view, just set up your camera to record from a longer vantage point. l That way, we can continue to see the products in question etc.

Thanks bud you helped a lot !!!😅

Thank you so much it worked!!!!!

after the outage my nest products got disconnected still having problems with the nest protect today error P014 (0.80)

Thank you so much !

Thank you so much! You helped me solve another problem. What if you change your wife router and password and need to connect all nest protect? Well, the way I did it. You have to remove all the devices from the app and start fresh. It works.

It Worked...Awsome!!

THX! ❤❤❤❤❤❤

my gen 2 is a few years old. It disconnected itself from my wifi. I factory-reset it and tried to readd to the network. It will connect to my other protect (gen 2), but it CANNOT add to my wifi, even though it can see it. Nest is sending me a new one.

Hi, what if you don't have the blue tab?

THANK YOU!!! It worked with a couple of additional steps. I had to remove the other 2 nest protects then add again. But I added the one I had trouble with first before adding the other 2.

I am just going to add my experience here - this video was very helpful but if you have reset all protects - it will not be able to find a companion protect to connect with. I could not use the scanning of QR code to connect the first unit - but eventually instead tried manually entering the code into the app and it works straight away. It then connected to a thermostat I had instead.

Just found your Video , too late . Ended up doing a Hard Reset on all Nest Protects and also removing the batteries from the Expired Unit . Still had issues . Looks like I cannot re-use the same name for the replacement location . If I did the App would crash . I tried Custom Name then used the same name and then it worked right away . Only problem now is that the new Gen2 replacement still comes up with a warning that the previous unit is about to expire . I've deleted the original Unit from the App , removed the batteries from the original unit and it still thinks my Bedroom Unit is about to expire . I will never buy a Nest again ./SRK

Can’t wait to try this! Hours wasted!

thanks for the video! I'm still having issues connecting, my assisting nest product is a thermostat and I don't know what to do. Any help would be appreciated.

I had this problem too. I tried the battery thing other failed trys. It has been fine for years until I went with Google. I thought redoing the setup would be easy like before. It wasn't. I finally reset my 4 nest protects to factory default. Hold the button on each unit for about 10 seconds you will hear a prompt saying that will be reset. I kept holding until the prompt said reset complete. Did that with all four devices. After that the setup went like breeze.

I’ve got a similar problem but not exactly. Upgraded my router and now it’s lost all connection with the Nest Protects. Managed to connect the Nest thermostat easy peasy as you just had to select the wifi and input the password but these have flummoxed me! Who on earth would design them like this? Using the app they just don’t connect or pick up anything (as they’re obviously looking for the old signal) but there’s no where to change or select anything else. Does anyone have any ideas? Please get in touch if you do. I’m thinking I might have to take them all down and start again but that seems crazy and with 3 on 13 foot ceilings not easy. My search goes on ……

I'd recommend not setting the floor your Nest Protect is on as the room it should speak, and setting the label as the room it is in. Otherwise, if your phone is dead, or not within your reach, if smoke or carbon monoxide is detected by a Protect with the room set as "Upstairs" or "Downstairs", it'll only say "Emergency! There is smoke upstairs." And you wont know which detector upstairs has activated, until you get your phone.

How can you delete the home from the app whe you have to Manny???

Great video. Fyi, your sound recording is clear and audible, but I had to maximise my computer volume and YT volume just to bring it to a low volume. You may wish to record at a higher volume.

I replaced my router. I reset one nest protect The app tried to find and connect to one of the other nest protects. But this was pointless because they all had the wrong WiFi information. I deleted all protects from my account. Added reset nest protect. This time it asked for WIFI information. It connected just fine this time.

Also if your having problems with it hold the button for 10 sec and I will basically reset it self

How do I increase the volume on my nest smoke alarm

Hi Great video! Slightly off topic but does the nest protect work with Alexa?

I got the first gen and there is no way to connect it to the wifi.

okay got it to work long asdfasd day here we go press the nest protect button on the middle until you heard will reset and start counting down also wait until its done because if not you will cancel the process then connect to the wifi band that your other nest products are using in my case was 5ghz remove the protect from the nest app then try to add it again after i did that it gave me a list and i was able to put the protect on the 2.4ghz band crazy...

What if I can’t even get one connected?

I think this is what's happening but with my thermostat and not another smoke detector... Trying it right now!

having similar issues (bit with all gen 2)

Jason, thanks for this video! Maybe we should compare swear words 🙂!

Wow

What happened if they expired

Thanks for the Vid, looks like you have the solution but you know what? I’m not going to spend any more time on the three new SDs I just purchased from Amazon; they’re going straight back. If they are going to fully automate this process then they need to have clear troubleshooting out there for problems like this. This experience has destroyed the credibility of the product for me. I’ll look elsewhere.

Sorry but, I watch your video over and over again and I can't understand what you did to solve it. I don't understand which of the generations you have in your hand when you show them and I don't understand which one you pull the batteries from and which one you try to connect when it finally works out. I'm not stupid, I just don't understand. The frustration is indeed enormous because I just bought a protector (without having any other connected in my house) and I can't connect it to my Wi-Fi!!

Way too long to get to the details man. Thank you though

To Waste of time

Did you review what you said? You’re rather unclear.

Please the next time you make a video to help people just get to the point

Thanks for the info. Here was my issue. I had an “original “ nest protect2 expire and had a new “ original” nest protect 2 new in the box. It had 2 years remaining and would not connect. So after 2 days of struggle I bought a new nest protect by Google. Amazing the Google nest protect connected immediately, I then added my new in the box “original” nest protect and it connected immediately. My conclusion is the nest app rejects the original nest product if it stands alone.