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Google Home will fix broken Familiar Faces alerts on Walmart’s Onn cameras

Google Home is working on a fix for broken Familiar Faces alerts on Walmart’s cheap Onn cameras that integrate similarly to Nest cameras.

One could make an argument that Google’s Familiar Faces features as a whole is at least a little broken all of the time, but it’s actually broken on Walmart’s Onn cameras. Like Nest cameras, Walmart advertises its Google Home-integrated cameras as supporting Familiar Faces (assuming you pay for Home Premium), but users recently pointed out that the feature is fully disabled in the backend.

Google, responding to the problem, says that this was in error, as a problem left the feature “temporarily disabled” with a fix already being validated for these devices to bring back support.

Thanks for raising this to our attention. The team identified the root cause in the device firmware which is why the feature is temporarily disabled. The fix is being validated and will be in the next firmware update in the coming weeks.

Notably, we’ve been unable to test this because the networking error we noted when the first batch of Walmart Onn cameras launched is still in place today.

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If you’ve been using these cameras, though, you should be getting Familiar Faces back in a future Google Home update “in the coming weeks.” In the meantime, Walmart continues to offer this lineup from $23 and up with Indoor, Outdoor, Floodlight, and Doorbell options available.

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Avatar for Ben Schoon Ben Schoon

Ben is a Senior Editor for 9to5Google.

Find him on Twitter @NexusBen. Send tips to schoon@9to5g.com or encrypted to benschoon@protonmail.com.