Nest 1st gen and 2nd gen thermostats no longer supported from 10/25/2025
129 comments
·September 5, 2025dreamcompiler
slg
While I agree with the message, I think honesty is important. The Nest gen 3 was released in 2015[1]. People got a 10-14 years out of these devices.
Also, that posts says the thermostat will still work locally so the failure state of the "smart" device here is that it became a "dumb" device after a decade+.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Nest#Nest_Learning_Ther...
swayvil
>I think honesty is important
Lol
j45
Not quite logical.
Release years aren’t purchase years.
Everyone didn’t have the same purchase year.
And, it’s just a thermostat. When they first came out it was a little novel. Not anymore.
Temperature is a solved problem and algorithm.
There’s no real reason to discontinue them - they do the same thing they always have, connected to the same shared infrastructure.
I highly doubt the cost of cloud, tech increased or decreased since then.
It feels like a form of forced planned obsolescence. Maybe some growth or product folks not hitting their bonus lol.
Gen 1 and Gen 2 were unique also don’t have microphones in them. I know Gen 2 handled microbursting well not sure about other gens.
The truth is the cloud is someone else’s computer and the cloud always costs someone else, if not the customer.
Maybe nests aren’t being replaced fast enough or new nest purchases aren’t growing like before due to other options.
I won’t trust or buy any more Nest devices again or trust the brand. I buy newer Nest devices and cycle them out.
Gen 1 and Gen 2 folks were early adopters and they can find more elsewhere.
There are lots of other better options.
It’s easy to go early adopt the next thing. Home automation has come a long way and those who are trying to earn in the past risk being left in the past.
The device will work locally but api is being removed so the mobile app won’t work and neither will any home automation integrations.
The least they could do is just let people control it directly. We’ll see if it gets unlocked now.
slg
We don't have to be exact or pedantic. Whatever the original purchase date for individual purchases, I guarantee they are closer to a decade ago than a year ago.
EDIT: That comment was heavily expanded after I replied. It was originally only about the distinction of purchase date. I won't debate the rest of the comment because as I said at the start, "While I agree with the message...". I just don't think this specific case is a particularly good example of what is being argued and therefore arguing it is probably counterproductive.
daviddavis
This is exactly why I’ve started only buying smart devices that work with Home Assistant and don’t rely on cloud services.
stego-tech
Ditto. Landlord shoved ecobees onto us after their developer program shuttered, and when internet connected they misbehave.
Curious to hear what local polling or local push thermostat you settled on with HA support!
jacquesm
Not the person you are asking. I'm partial to all Shelly stuff. So far very reliable and the price is ok. They do have a cloud but it is entirely optional.
UnlockedSecrets
What are the best ways of finding such devices? Almost all the time when I look into some product it ends up being connected to some random cloud service with its own login.
asdff
It isn't easy, but you just have to do your due diligence and really explore the featuresets available for a given category of product.
A shortcut however is checking out the homelab subreddit. People will post about the gear they are using in their stack.
userbinator
I have one of these: https://i.redd.it/629z71qmiq0c1.jpg
It will probably last over a century.
add-sub-mul-div
> and then they fail in new and exciting ways
The first thing I did when I bought my house was remove the Ring camera, but I left the keycode entry for the front door in place. Long story short, a few months later it locked me out of the house and shortly after I replaced it with a regular lock and key. Never again.
jacquesm
Someone at the Cirius Cybernetics Corporation had a good laugh at you.
j45
Well said.
Smarthome tech like this is just trying to make a quick buck at the expense of a lifelong relationship with a customer.
paranoidrobot
> "Smart Cloud" home devices work as expected for about a year and then they fail in new and exciting ways, and then you replace them.
> "Smart Local Control" home devices work as expected until the electronics fail
ftfy.
dreamcompiler
This assumes two things:
1. That you can buy a smart local control device.
2. That the electronics were designed with appropriate thermal management so they don't fry themselves quickly. Smart bulbs are the most notorious offenders here, but the problem is widespread.
thangalin
https://www.sinopetech.com/en/collections/temperature-contro...
I replaced all my thermostats for both of my homes with Sinopé products. Smart, allows integration with locally hosted home automation, and compatible with ZigBee networks. Purchased my first batch in late 2021 and haven't had any issues. Physical temperature controls if the LAN goes offline. Highly recommend.
Here's the hardware installed for on-prem home automation using the open-source Home Assistant software:
* Raspberry Pi[1] CPU, heatsink, A/C adapter, and case
* ConBee II Zigbee USB gateway[2]
* USB ADATA Micro SD card reader and USB cable
* Micro SD card (for operating system and Home Assistant)
* Ethernet cable (optional if using onboard WiFi)
There's a tutorial walking through the setup:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJEwrSSFe9s
It takes a little more labour to make it remotely accessible via smart phone, but once you have it locally hosted, that world is your oyster.
[1]: https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-4-model-b/
zahirbmirza
Connected thermostats are great in theory! But they should not have to rely on a cloud connection. A local network with the option of internet connectivity would be awesome; but, it seems, no company is going to become uber successful if there isn't the option of forced upgrades and cloud subscriptions. Look at Ring...
throwway120385
If you're VC-funded then the valuation is the most important thing. The only way to juice your valuation is to get recurring revenue, because it comes with an 8x to 10x multiple. So you don't want to be in the hardware game, you want to use hardware to get a foothold in someone's home and then get them to pay you a subscription to maintain that hardware.
I think the valuation thing is what drives 90% of this stuff. Whereas an established company like Honeywell is more interested in building products and selling a lot of them, so they're going to charge you 5-10x of the cost of a Nest for the same feature set but with a local-first implementation instead of a cloud-first implementation.
I don't think I would ever buy a hardware product from a company billing themselves as a VC-backed startup.
Also, FWIW the Nest is a perfectly functional thermostat even if you never hook it up to their app. We found the scheduling and learning features to be really annoying so we turned them all off and never connected ours to the cloud.
AceJohnny2
I agree almost entirely, but I gotta quibble a point:
> so [companies like Honeywell] are going to charge you 5-10x of the cost of a Nest for the same feature set but with a local-first implementation
"Established" companies also see the long-term value of subscriptions and are also hopping on that bandwagon.
Additionally, customers are extremely sensitive to up-front price, so a product that's more expensive up-front but with no subscription fee and longer-term value will have trouble finding a foothold in the market compared to cheaper but subscription-based alternatives. Especially if the alternatives are "1 year free!" as they usually are.
j45
Just because someone found them annoying doesn’t mean others do.
Nests performed well in unique spaces with different heating and cooling profiles, not to mention different kinds of shoulder seasons.
rpcope1
Honeywell's z-wave thermostat basically does all of the shiny shit you'd want out of a connected thermostat while making basically impossible to lock the user out because Honeywell decided it didn't like the product anymore. Why people have to keep relearning this with IoT devices baffles me, and that Z-wave or maybe Zigbee isn't what's insisted upon.
stavros
I bought a $20 Zigbee thermostat from AliExpress and it has been fantastic. It turns on when it's cold, and off when it's hot. Anything else, I can do with software, because it's just Zigbee.
gerdesj
I go for Zwave by choice but Zigbee comes a close second. It does share 2.4GHz with wifi but its many tiny bands fit within the "edges" of the wifi bands. If you stick to 1,6,11 for wifi, Zigbee will co-exist very happily. Even if you don't, it will still work fine - the messages are tiny.
Both Zwave and Zigbee build mesh networks with multiple routes. Wifi devices ... don't. Wifi is fine for IoT but it isn't optimised for it. My fridge/freezer uses wifi as does my oven and microwave. It doesn't matter if they lose comms sometimes and there is no choice anyway.
My light switches are Zwave. Thanks to way modern UK wiring is done, most of my switches end up with an extra conductor and so are permanently powered and act as hubs for the battery powered window sensors and the like.
My cameras are all PoE ethernet, including the door bell. All Reolink.
I have two UPSs with at least 30 mins run time. I could easily put in a genny or a battery or even use my car (EV) but its not important enough (yet). So far everything will work without the internet.
I have deployed two VLANS for IoT - THINGS, and SEWER for the really worrying gear on it!
Home Assistant runs the show.
asdff
Plenty of companies are successfull and don't rely on forced cloud. Reolink for example. Plenty of others.
The real difference is that these are not american sv vc backed companies like nest or ring. they are chinese companies set on disrupting those vc backed companies using this local first mindset as the differentiator.
ocdtrekkie
My Insteon thermostat is a great dumb thermostat that I can also send commands to over a serial connection to a powerline/RF modem. (Very similar to Z-Wave's RF, though proprietary.)
The key is do not buy smart devices with Wi-Fi. There are better products for serious people. Everyone here with a Zigbee or Z-Wave product probably learned that the hard way first. ;)
SV_BubbleTime
EcoBee is happy to work without WiFi.
gxs
They are so shady about this stuff
I have a Honeywell t6 that I got when they installed a new unit - Honeywell INSISTS that you create an account and download the app to connect it to your home network
Thankfully this is bullshit and you can connect it directly from the thermostat to HomeKit - you will not find a single piece of documentation on this though and will be told it’s not possible
The real kicker is that there is a notification to register your device that you can’t get rid of unless you register your device
You can only snooze it for a couple weeks at a time
How I’d love to have one on one conversations with the evil people who approve this type of crap
xp84
The shameful part is that the only thing that even remotely (no pun intended) needs a server to even be online, is the out-of-home control, just for NAT traversal. It should be free to Google for these to have at least in-home smart functionality forever.
Well, that, and the moving target of updating an "app" every year for all the breaking changes Google and (especially) Apple do to the mobile OS. Although honestly I'd rather have a QR code that links you to a PWA hosted on the thermostat itself.
nonfamous
I’m affected by this, and as pissed at Google about it as anyone, but the headline is overblown. The old Nest devices continue to function as thermostats, and the on-device features like scheduling still work. But I need the cloud-based features (particularly remote control via the app), so I went ahead and paid the upgrade tax.
selkin
Setting schedules on the devices ain't bad as on some "dumb" thermostats, but it's a real pain in the ass.
ryandrake
This should be pretty much true for every "connected" device out there. They should all have a mode that works by directly connecting over the local LAN. Why do device manufacturers refuse to support this configuration?
If I want to change the volume of my "smart speaker" from my phone that's also on my LAN, it shouldn't require a round trip to a server on the Internet, or an account with credentials, or any of that nutty stuff.
lstamour
It’s crazy that Sonos used to* have local wifi mesh networking and they decided “the cloud is better”.
* technically still does, but they tried to switch before they backpedaled
nwellinghoff
Anything that requires a cloud account and does not offer a self hosted option, even a limited one, should be considered throw away. Would be nice if google released a self hosted server for these as a nod and thanks to the early customers.
bobmcnamara
Or just open up a little JSON server on the thermostat.
metaltyphoon
> Would be nice if google released a self hosted server
These mofos are too greedy to do this.
0cf8612b2e1e
To each their own, but the idea of an internet connected thermostat (at great expense!) never made sense to me. A $20 Honeywell lets you program 4 regions per day (waking, day, evening, night) and will be fine almost every day of the year. Has a battery backup and never failed me.
I guess it would be cute to get some analytics dashboard, but that’s about where my interest ends.
dgacmu
I really appreciate mine. My big use case is that we go away for a week or two over winter sometimes and turn the house down to 55F. The radiators take quite a while to heat the house back up from that temperature, so I turn the temperature back up remotely the morning before we fly back.
That said, I'm quite annoyed that Google is nuking my perfectly functional thermostat, and I will be buying an Ecobee to replace it, and integrating it with home assistant.
loloquwowndueo
So you use smart thermostat functionality once a year? What’s wrong with wearing jackets indoors for half a day once a year :)
asdff
55F is the temp I know a lot of people keep their house at in the winter. Mostly older poorly insulated homes where the bill will be absurd if they put it at 72*. Sweaters work. So do blankets.
bluGill
the more likely case is they just leave it on normal when they are gone - like everyone else
nkrisc
Well beyond a basic dumb thermostat I like that my EcoBee can use several wireless temperature sensors. During the day I have it set to only use the downstairs sensors and at night it only uses the upstairs sensors.
Can a $20 Honeywell thermostat do that with wireless sensors? If it can, I will get one.
karlshea
The issue that the Nest solved for me was figuring out how long it took for the hot water to get to the radiators, and what the bounce looked like after it got there. It'll stop calling for heat before it reaches the final temp because it will still keep going up.
It doesn't need to be cloud-connected to do so, but that's not a feature I'm aware a $20 Honeywell has.
CSSer
I used to have a Honeywell wi-fi thermostat. It looked like any other thermostat you've ever seen, except you could connect it to a home hub. It was nice because you could exactly what you're describing, but you could also do it in the app.
What made it worth it was being able to turn off the air or heat when you weren't home automatically. Now all or the "AI training" garbage? Yeah, forget that. I used to work in an office with a nest and it was torture if you showed up too early if stayed a little too late.
null
renewiltord
Everyone always says this stuff, but man these things are such garbage to use: terrible user interface, LCD screen with random blinking elements to tell you that's being edited, response rate slower than a ping to Mars. Modern app-connected thermostats are so much better.
I have the same thing and to be honest, if I had to replace a $200 thermostat every 2 years I would gladly do it. In fact, this whole thing has made me go and research which thermostat will fit where I live.
ryandrake
It's starting to look like when you buy any kind of electronics gizmo with a UI, your choices are limited to:
1. A non-smart device that will work forever but looks and feels like it's still in the 90s
2. A device with a nice, responsive UI, but destined for the landfill because it's chained to a cloud service.
Why are these things mutually exclusive? Across so many product categories, there's seemingly few or no options for a nice UI but without dependence on an Internet service that will inevitably shut down.
OJFord
Because people won't pay (or the companies(' research) don't think they'll pay) much for the hardware, so it's a loss leader or barely profitable promotion for the subscription service.
Not that straightforwardly in Nest's particular case to be fair, but a lead in to other products, and Nest was perhaps bought by Google before having to worry too much about profit margins(?).
xyzelement
The key usecases for me are:
Adjusting the thermostat (which is downstairs) from bed.
At the airport - oh shit did I turn off the AC for the two weeks we'll be away? Ok I just did.
jkestner
I got a Honeywell Sensi thermostat that can do that, and also works without an internet connection. Better things are possible.
dogcow
Luckily, this can all be achieved using a Wi-Fi or (even better) a Z-Wave thermostat that is 100% locally-controlled using something like Home Assistant or any number of other solutions.
xyzelement
The guy I replied to was asking why you'd want an Internet connected thermostat.
I am a HA guy and prior to my ecobee I ran an American Radio Thermostat with local HA support and you could control over curl. But the wifi module was so old that no modern device connected to it when I had to reset it up.
But I agree zwave plus HA are a great option too.
slipnslider
Same. My Nest has probably paid for itself in terms of me being able to remotely disable it while away on trips
sneak
I like being able to adjust HVAC based on temperature sensors that are not co-located with the input keypad.
Being able to use the temp reading in a specific room is choice.
drob518
As a wise man once said, “Anything plus computer equals computer.”
walterbell
Is there a list of devices which have been rescued or extended by open-source software?
Lyrion Music Server (formerly Logitech Media Server) is open-source server software for Squeezebox audio players, https://lyrion.org/
Tasmota is open-source firmware for ESP8266 and ESP32-based devices, https://templates.blakadder.com/preflashed-stand.html & https://github.com/tasmota
Some IP cameras have open firmware replacements.
Some Chromebooks are supported by mainline Linux.
tomr75
you can buy these sensors off aliexpress cheap
RyanShook
Can someone at Google explain why the company can’t end formal support for the thermostat but make the API open? It’s a thermostat. It has 3 real functions - cool, heat, fan. What could it possibly hurt to let owners access the endpoints without touching Google servers?
asdff
But then the customer might not buy a new nest....
boringg
NEST protect has been a thorn in my side. Aside from just completely eating batteries - it constantly has to reconnect.
I wish the internet of things was soo much better than it is. There was a dream once of a world that worked efficiently, and then profit models came in and destroyed it.
asdff
That parallel universe exists its just on aliexpress.com not amazon.com. Cheap hardware and open protocols as promised.
scrumper
You’ve got to use the one specific brand and type of battery they insist on. It’s some energizer lithium thing I’ll have to check for you and comment later. Anything else fails very fast, the correct ones last for years.
RyanShook
API access is being ended as well, so third-party apps and services will not work.
sedatk
I was hoping that at least my Home Assistant integration would keep working. That sucks terribly. Lesson of the day: Avoid any IoT device that you can't use without an external service.
cheald
FWIW, I replaced my Nests with Centralite Pearls a few years ago, and have been extremely happy with them WRT Home Assistant. The Pearl doesn't seem to be widely available anymore, but any Zwave or Zigbee thermostat + a local hub gets you a thermostat that should work with Home Assistant and will be immune to being sunsetted like this.
sedatk
That's a good suggestion. Thanks!
testbjjl
Wyze is asking folks on Reddit if they’re willing to pay monthly for RTSP access.
asdff
I shied away from wyze when they killed some features in some wifi cams I had years ago. It used to work like most others where it would detect movement and record a 30 second clip. Somewhere along the way that became a paid subscription only feature. Should have never updated that firmware...
I'm using reolink now for doorbell and will probably stick to them and other such brands going forward. poe of course too since all battery based cams suck in comparison (no live streaming capability or preroll recording before detection, needing regular charging). Wifi units are kind of crappy too compared to poe. Running cable is kind of satisfying in a strange way imo.
"Dumb" home devices work as expected for 25-50 years, and then you replace them.
"Smart" home devices work as expected for about a year and then they fail in new and exciting ways, and then you replace them.