Google Home presence sensing: how “home” and “away” work

How Google Home figures out who is home

Presence sensing uses three kinds of signals, according to Google’s help pages:

• Phones. Each person’s phone uses a virtual boundary around your home (geofencing) and Wi-Fi connectivity to detect arrivals and departures. The phone location feature is off by default and you opt in. Only one app (Google Home, Nest or a partner app) can use geofencing from a phone at a time.
• Wi-Fi. You can add your home network; when a phone connects or disconnects from it, that signals presence. The network must use WPA2 or WPA3.
• Devices. Eligible devices such as motion detectors, Nest thermostats, speakers and displays, smart TVs, streaming devices and game consoles can use motion, voice or media activity (playing, pausing, volume changes) to help detect that someone is home.

For a wider look at location triggers across all platforms, see geofencing for the smart home.

Set it up in five steps

1. Turn on presence sensing in the Google Home app’s Home settings, and choose which phones and devices count.
2. Ask every adult to join and enable their own phone. If one person does not, the home may not detect them and “everyone’s away” can trigger while they are still inside.
3. Add your Wi-Fi network as a presence signal if you want a second source.
4. Create the automation: in the app, tap Add, then Automation, and add Home or Away as a starter or a condition. Pick your actions and save.
5. Test it by leaving with all phones, waiting a few minutes, and checking the activity history.

What “everyone away” actually means

Google says the Away automation starts after the last person’s phone leaves home, and the Home automation starts when the first phone returns. Sensor input can change the timing: if a thermostat detects motion around your departure, the switch to Away may be delayed. A visitor or a child without a phone is not counted, so the house can go to Away while someone is inside.

Automations that suit presence

If you are leaving for a trip, a manual Away mode plus a checklist works better than presence alone. See our vacation smart home checklist.

Privacy: what Google stores and who sees it

• Google says the Home app does not track where you go beyond whether you are inside the geofence, and that presence data is separate from your Google Account’s Location History.
• Presence history for the home is kept for 60 days and deleted automatically. Any member can delete it sooner with “Delete all presence history”.
• Other household members can see when you manually switch the home to Home or Away. You can see your own arrivals and departures in the Activity tab.
• Turning off phone locations for the whole home, or for one phone, stops presence-based automations from knowing when you leave or arrive, and some features such as “Only ring when home” may stop too.

Agree on this with your household. Tracking an adult’s phone without their knowledge is a privacy problem, and rules about monitoring vary by state. Our guide to indoor camera privacy covers the cameras side.

Limits you should plan around

• Google states automations are “for convenience only, not safety or security-critical use cases” and may not always work. Do not rely on presence to turn off a heater or arm a lock.
• Phones with battery saver on or location permission off may be missed.
• Presence-based automations cannot be paused or deleted from the Routines screen; turn presence sensing off to stop them from starting.
• Not every third-party device can contribute to presence.