Annoyed by your video doorbell’s notification? Check this setting now

December 23, 2022

By Kim Komando

A video doorbell is a great tool to see who’s at your door. When it rings, you don’t even have to get off the couch as you can easily open your mobile phone and take a look at the camera. It also keeps an eye on your porch, helping you keep tabs on packages and visitors.

The more your device captures, the more your battery is drained. And a dead battery renders your doorbell useless. Tap or click here to get more life out of your video doorbell battery.

But if you have a camera at the front door, you probably know how annoying it can be when alerts come through for insignificant things. It can easily be triggered by people walking past or a leaf blowing in the wind. But don’t despair, as Amazon has a built-in setting that will make your life a little more peaceful.

Here’s the backstory

Constant push notifications about movement in your front yard can put you in the habit of ignoring them. This can be disastrous if there is a legitimate emergency or intruder on your property.

But it doesn’t have to be this way, especially when you are home and the camera is active. Amazon’s Ring mobile app has a setting that can automatically snooze alerts from your security cameras and doorbells.

It’s called Geofence, and it creates “a virtual perimeter or invisible boundary around a particular geographic location.” You set it up so that you get notifications about movement when you are outside of the geofence. But when you get home and re-enter the boundary, all notifications are snoozed. 

What you can do about it

It’s relatively easy to set up Geofence, but you must ensure that your mobile phone and Ring app is updated to the latest version.

Here’s how to set up Geofence:

• Open your Ring app.
• Tap the three lines in the upper-left corner of your screen.
• Then, tap Settings > Geofence.
• Read through the terms and conditions and tap Acknowledge.
• Adjust the perimeter’s placement by dragging the circle to a position on the map. You can also tap the arrow in the lower right to use the current location of your mobile device.
• Tap Confirm.

Auto-Snooze is a feature intended to help you prevent alerts triggered by motion right after you enter your geofence. So, after that, select which devices you wish to snooze notifications for, and set the snooze duration.

• Once that is set up, tap Continue.
• Choose whether to enable the Arm reminder (when you exit the geofence), the Disarm reminder (when you enter the geofence), or both.
• Select whether you’d like to have a specific notification tone play.
• Tap Continue and then tap Finish & Save.

Keep reading

Have this security cam at home? You should probably stop using it

Best video doorbells: 5 options for keeping an eye on the porch