UniFi Protect

—Updated as of version 1.20.0– The developers have finally added the ability to have custom sound notifications for camera detections! Thank you! I have updated this to a 5 star rating! —Original Review— I have been using Unifi products for awhile now. Protect is a great app that works mostly flawless, however there is one feature it NEEDS to have that would make a HUGE difference. This app NEEDS to include custom sounds for its push notifications. On Apple products there is no way to create custom sound notifications for push notifications in settings. 3rd party apps have to have custom sounds “baked in” to their software. Protect does not have this feature so as of iOS 17 we are stuck with Apple’s very soft global notification sound for all notifications within the Protect application. I don’t hear my motion notifications!!! Protect developers could you please do us all a favor and put this feature at the top of the list to add in a future update?!? It’s all over the internet that people want it, and now NEED it! You have a stellar app, now I just need to hear my push notifications!

While I’m a huge fan of Ubiquiti products I find the app features for the doorbell severely lacking. First off, there should be a persistent ringing on my phone when it’s pushed and a button right on the notification on my phone that allows me to answer and talk to whoever is at the door. They built the hardware (and it’s excellent) but they released it without the necessary upgrades to the software to make it truly usable as a video doorbell. They have a text screen with a preset for DND but it doesn’t silence the doorbell. They need scripted actions available that do things like mute the chimes & alerts when in DND and they need to make these more accessible right from the main screen instead of buried in camera settings. It’s a great start but needs many improvements on the software side. The rest of the camera features are excellent and if I was just looking for security cameras alone this is a great platform. I will say this, some of the other players in the video doorbell market have been doing this a lot longer and still don’t have many things right. Ubiquiti has an opportunity here to bring their name into business the way Apple has done, through the personal use of influencers. I think there’s a lot to do here and they’d be wise to do it sooner rather than later.

My system used to work really good before the last update and I used to be able to see events in real time and was able to catch people at my door etc while the motion was detected and recording the event with only a 2-3 second delay. With this new update there is a like a 10 second delay with viewing the clips because it has to load and most times the event doesn’t show up the first time you click on it so you have to close the clip and click it again. By the time that you get to view the event it’s too late to take live action because 40-50 seconds have passed and you are pushing a minute and people are already leaving or gone by then. I live in an area that is not the best so the real time notifications helped me navigate and turn on lights quickly or whatever I needed to deter people from my home. The live feed is also very slow and delayed, it lags really bad and even though I am watching it it doesn’t show everything live. Cars and people are frozen most time when you watch the feed, it’s like you see them, freezes and then they are gone when it updates the feed. Also, one of my cameras has a hard time catching events at night that it used to, even after trying to ‘fix’ the settings. I really liked my cameras until this update, please fix these lag issues, I prefer the previous versions better.

UPDATE: Developers responded to my issue below, and no more login notifications for me. ❤️ Definitely appreciate the quick customer service, and I’m back to loving my cameras. Thank you! I really love my cameras and this app, but for the past few months, I get a notification on my phone EVERY SINGLE TIME I log into the app. “Admin Access Console.” And my husband gets the notification when I log in on His phone as well. The option is not even turned on in the notification settings, so why do we get them? Please fix this, or tell me how to fix it, because I’m constantly checking the cameras throughout the day, and even when I tab out for just a moment and come back, I get the notification again. 🤬

I started with Ubiquiti products as a trial run. I got hooked and now have many of their products. The issue I have with this Protect Software is that cameras are expensive and currently I have issues with software not allowing me to see cameras with my iPhones. I hope on next update this is resolved as it’s very frustrating to have to close and open application until it works. I am using an iPhone 12 so should work. So, if any of the developers truly read these messages help me an many other by fixing this issue without having to waste our time finding the how to. We already paid a lot of money for your products and I can’t recommend what doesn’t work properly. Now I do like how we can now see multiple cameras at once. I also like that I don’t have to pay to view my cameras. Please fix issues with iPhone usage and I will be happy again. Thanks in advance!

Edit: to share more information I had some “unexpected error occurred” issues after transferring to a new phone, if you disable 2-factor, login and then re-enable 2-factor the error corrects itself and you can then log in and out with two factor as expected. I think apple is carrying over tokens or cookies or something that aren’t valid when moved. If you get an unexpected error has occurred on trying to log in disable two factor temporarily and log in normally. After that two factor and the app will work normally on sign out

Just to start this off, I love my Ubiquiti equipment. The network app is nerd central. The real “problem” with the Protect app is really just the small quality of life things: - You can’t set a unique notification sound for motion alerts. I can’t audibly differentiate between a Facebook message and somebody being in my driveway at night. Is this really asking too much? - Protect does not have a snooze feature like Ring does. I can’t mow or wash my car without 30 notifications letting me know that I’m in my own yard. - You can’t set custom schedules from this app, you have to do it from a PC Browser logged into your console. It’s 2022. These things should not be “features”, rather part of the basic operation of the application. Why is my $2200 worth of UniFi Protect gear not backed by a solid management application?

I’m sorry but this system is almost unusable. The application constantly freezes, constantly stutters, very often starts double playing audio with 1 second delay. I purchased these for my business and find myself regularly wanting to look at a timestamped ticket. The amount of time I waste every time I need to check my cameras is simply unacceptable. It can take me force closing and re-trying the app 6,7 times before it finally gets a decent connection. The same thing happens with my home network which is far simpler and I am not the only person reporting these problems according to my research in trying to fix these issues. Buyer be warned the product is almost unusable and requires great frustration to use in its current state. This has been an on-going issue for at least a year now.

Unifi has nailed it with this app. There have been a lot of failures and crashes over the years but the app is now in a really good place. Thank you for your hard work ok this. Thank you for adding dark mode a while back! I would still like to see some Apple HomeKit support and the ability to swipe from left to right to go back a page. The back arrow is a little to far up there on my 12 Pro Max screen. Would love to just swipe back to the main camera screen. Edit: Hard to download from iPad. I figured out how to download clips on the iPad, but I can’t figure out how ti download between two times like on iPhone. Why is it different?

I recently switched from garbage consumer networking equipment to a Dream Machine SE. I also got a UniFi doorbell, as Ring and other manufacturers are horrendous between support, privacy, and hidden costs. This app has worked well for my family, but it does hang up sometimes. There are a few other reviews noting hang-ups, and those systems may be using several cameras. For my setup of one camera, I'm satisfied. Unfortunately these devices lack HomeKit support, which will keep me from rating 5 stars. Enterprise is definitely the target market, but doorbells are on most houses. There's a market opportunity for better network gear in residential settings, and bundled closed-circuit home camera systems, with HomeKit, are an excellent sales pitch.

i initially made a one star review in order to get supports attention to an issue with Protect where video streams may start and then get greyed out. i did not get much help from support but ultimately figured out it was NordVPN clobbering the video stream. if you are having an issue with video streams not starting or being grayed out shortly after starting try turning off the VPN. Protect works great and with the new AI functions was able to pull a facial image off the side of a truck! Logging vehicle tags and facial images really is quite the enhancement with the new AI cameras!

Overall, I like the UniFi camera system. My concern is I would like to be able to allow users to see only certain cameras, and not to be able to see my entire system. For instance, I allow the police department to view cameras for incidents that occur around properties and I want to restrict access to the UniFi dream machine or Internet. I have not been able to find a way to do that and that is preventing me from changing all of my systems to UniFi protect. The interface is so different from other camera systems too.

Unless I'm watching the cameras live, the app is useless. It it impossible to scroll through history and review any video. There is nothing smooth about the process. It jumps all over the place and unless I download the video, it is ALWAYS grainy. I'm connected to my UNVR via ethernet cable....sitting 3 feet away from the box. The app has always been horrible and it would be nice if they would just start completely over. I have 2K cameras at home and at the office....and I'll never been able to view anything in 2K. I had a guy standing 15 feet away from the camera and I couldn't even make out his face in the Protect app. The viewed on my phone, on my iPad, on my computer, on the web....it's all garbage. I think my Nest cameras from 10 years ago showed better video.

Updated to all the latest software and randomly get an alert while I’m almost home that my phone is within geofence. Bought this gear in January of 2017 and it has never worked. Get home, plug in one of my Unifi cameras and low and behold it is correctly not sending me alerts as I’m within the geofence. Better later than never. Figured I’d do the right thing and update my rating here, the rest of the system, the routing and access points, I’ve never had a single issue with

In the Apple TV box Protect App it is very difficult to scroll "exactly" to the event I need to look in to, and I would like you to make two search speeds, the first speed to scrolls through frames very slowly, and the second to remains as fast as it is now. Thanks! Actualy in my opinion your application has a very fast and, the most convenient event search back in to the video timeline. but please fix this minor inconvenience...

App layout is fantastic and most times works as expected. That said, it doesn’t seem to play well with Stage Manager on iPadOS (sometimes the UI gets funky when it comes to mouse control). Also, there are random bugs whereby you’ll start interacting with a camera feed, leave that feed, but the audio continues to play that first feed while you view another camera feed. This makes it difficult to use the microphone on the 2nd feed because you get the background noise from the first feed.

Betting on the later, definitely employee ratings. Again and again and again, years of zero progress on this app. Add feature, take it away, add feature back, break feature, just constant crap. Wiping away all the one star reviews? This app is broken half the time and only gets worse after every update. Broken promises of upcoming “features” that should be basic functionality. Who the heck is even running this company? I will never buy another Ubiquiti product again. I have already ditched their access points and switches of which I had several thousand dollars worth. This camera ecosystem is next. So glad to have switched over to Aruba for networking gear.

App is designed well with easy access to motion/detection events and being able to see live feeds quick. It is very easy to download/share clips as well which is extremely important to me. I was attempting to adjust the infrared sensitivity for a camera and though it showed it stayed at medium instead of low… When I went back to the live view then back into the settings again it was back at low. It doesn’t seem to be sending/saving changes for this setting.

Reasonable app overall. Some lag with still images on the index. Export clip options are apparently unavailable and scrubbing isn’t intuitive or precise enough for granular review. There’s a bug at the moment where the door bell response interface won’t actually allow you to hear the person at the door and you have to switch over to the main camera view to actually talk to the person at the door.

While I appreciate that you can authenticate and view recording over WiFi, it is a deal breaker for me that you cannot do this over a VPN. If you try to you get an error and are prompted to authenticate via the cloud service, when when you can reach the console. Ubiquiti, please allow users to forgo the cloud access and allow them to log in via VPN like you do for the UniFi Network app. The privacy aspect of Protect is a big draw and being able to store footage locally is great! But if I have to enable a cloud service to access it, it makes me very wary. I can’t be the only potential customer who is waiting for this to be implemented to furnish my home with cameras.

Overall the design and usability of the app is great. My only problem (which really kills most of the utility of the app!) is that it refuses to play the video when I jog on the timeline. I can scroll the timeline or use the 15-second jump buttons to get to individual frames. But it almost always just stays on that frame and refuses to play the video. Tapping pause/play has no effect. 2016 iPad Pro. I also had trouble with initial setup of my G4 doorbell, during Bluetooth connection. Support never replied. Eventually after switching several times between my iPad and my Pixel phone, the iPad managed to connect.

The app changes often… well, because. Our customers wouldn’t think we were delivering value if we didn’t constantly move things around to prove we’re working hard, right? Sure, we could just pick a feature set, test diligently, deliver the app, and fix bugs occasionally until it just works… but seriously, like one gray-bearded customer would appreciate that. Everyone else knows, if the updates don’t break your workflow or introduce 10x as many bugs as they fix, your app isn’t modern. Who wants an app with a feature set so fixed, and that is so well tested, that it could have been shipped on physical media?

We have been using UniFi Protect for several years. Not the best system but overall happy. The app is very responsive considering the amount of data that streams over cellular or Wi-Fi. If you need to pull large video a laptop with a good connection is necessary. For a quick clip the mobile app is good. Most people don’t realize that you need good hard drives (surveillance drives). We use WD purple pro drives and have never experienced an issue.

Thank goodness for 1.13.0, finally Viewport is supported!! I can finally change views quickly from my phone, instead of scrabbling for my laptop to see a closer view of what’s going on. If you could add the option to change Viewport views from the main page, maybe a button next to the Multiview button, that would be the greatest. Also the ability to customize the Multiview in the app. Love the app, and how easy it is to navigate and download video.

The AppleTV app has stopped crashing with my G4 Doorbells, so I’ll bump it up to 4 stars. Still has UI issues. Also, the text is much too small when scrolling through a timeline, and it’d be nice if there was a mechanism to snap to a motion event and type in an exact time. Still, I do like watching the sunrise in my backyard, or scrubbing through snow melting. Fun. The iPhone app is OK, and is a major improvement over my previous camera’s app from SmartSignal. Certainly easier to flick through time and scrub along.

Come over from NightOwl. I purchased a UDMPro with 4 G4Pro cameras. While nightowl cameras were good for the price. This completely blow it out of the water. The Protect app is PEFECT for monitoring and keeping an eye on your place when you’re home and away. The notifications come through nearly instantly whenever you are on the local network which is EXTREMELY helpful for knowing when someone has come to your home. The motion detection works great (notifications) but the AI detections are x10 better. It detected my new cameras within a minute of plugging them in to the network which made setup super easy. Would recommend to anyone who can afford it. I’ve also seen the UDM Pro with g3 Flex cameras (much cheaper) and they work amazing too!

IT has troubleshot this issue so many times. Sometimes the app isn’t up to date but most of the time it doesn’t work. Phones don’t notify and tablet doesn’t notify. System is set to ALWAYS NOTIFY. When in app there is no notification by app design because it assumes you are looking at it. Trouble is, it’s on a tablet for monitoring and while the app may be open, eyes are seldom fixed on the tablet and the ringing notification is 100% needed. Also thumbnail images are sometimes misleading of actual detection (the wrong person is shown). The Wi-Fi doorbells randomly disconnect and fail to reconnect, again requiring IT to reconnect

It’s very difficult to export a specific event or clip. By default the time selection isn’t the part of action then dragging the sliders doesn’t update the frame so you can’t tell where to start. The only workaround to this is watching the time stamp on the clip then manually dragging the sliders to cover the time of the action. This actions should be obviously simple.

Love having recorded video locally. Love scrubbing thru past recordings easily. Love smart detections. Hate that individual cameras stop streaming and you can’t easily tell they are hung on the overview page. Have to kill app and restart on iPad to get them to stream again. Hate the cached static image version loaded on first click. Start streaming, then give me past detections. I’m not switching to another platform yet, but this app could be and should be much more fault tolerant.

This app is the worst. Half the time it launches to the console selection screen when I only have one Protect app running (disabled on UDM, STOP SHOWING IT). The other half it launches deep into the app where I was last time and I have to press back 10 times to get to the main screen. Then other times it just refuses to actually load the streams. How hard is it to just launch to my live camera views every time??? 9 times out of 10 someone rings a doorbell and by the time I can actually get the app to show me who is there, they would be gone. Kinda makes the doorbell camera pointless.

Hoping in the future for further latency reductions and a better experience on the iPhone app. Zooming in can be somewhat awkward especially with the notches on the iPhone. The Apple TV app needs MUCH improvement. I would like the Apple TV app to have the same camera layout as the full screen website viewer would have, but it does not - there is just a ton of wasted screen space making it quite useless as a solution for viewing all the cameras at the same time on a TV. Probably because UI wants us to buy their expensive TV adapter thing 😐🙄

I have constant issues with the app working in the home network the system is connected to. When connecting through cell service, works much faster. Also, if you don’t have notifications turned on, you have to delete the app from your phone and reload it for it to work. I have notified the company and the IT rep locally who tell me it works fine from their computer. Sorry, but I’m not at my computer every time I need to look at the video I paid for, that’s why I hoped to use the app, which doesn’t work. Don’t try and ask for help, they will not provide it.

The detections UI has no filter which shows ONLY motion events. If you have cameras which observe areas with vehicle traffic and others for observing wildlife you can’t focus on the latter without a lot of effort scrolling the timeline of each individual camera. It would be nice if the detections offered one more filter “motion” which excluded all of the smart detections (vehicles, people, alarms) to make these easier to browse in one view.

Just got my UNVR setup with the first G4 Pro I’m deploying, and am pretty disappointed that when I go back to review recorded detections that I cannot jump ahead/behind in the timeline and have the app catch up and play back the video from that point. If I let the entire detection clip play, the video will run through as expected, but as soon as you try to jump to a different point it will just sit there. This is basic video review functionality and should be functional. Really disappointed.

I’m having the same problem as Hockeyxguy13 — after a few minutes of playback my feeds turn into gray boxes… I have to restart the app to get them back and even then I still get a mix of gray and normal thumbnails when reviewing a single feed. I am using the most current UniFi IOS app on my 2023 iPad Pro running IOS 17.3.1. Thanks for any help you can give me!

The poe door chime is still stuck with one sound. This app really needs to treat the doorbell button press like a voip call rather than just another push notification. Swipe to answer, even from the lock screen, so you can view the video and audio quickly, then press another button to unmute your mic, initiating 2-way audio. Don’t tell the visitor that a call is active until 2-way audio starts and don’t tell them you answered and are watching. The user experience with this app is really good, but answering the doorbell from the lockscreen the way you answer a regular call or voip call would add some nice finishing touches. I still can’t believe the PoE chime speaker doesn’t have custom sound options yet.

Every so often one of my g4 instant cameras stops working and the only option is to remove the camera and readd it as per Unifi. When I do this is where the troubles start. I can add the camera via Bluetooth says “close” it scans via Bluetooth then goes to Wi-Fi. It never shows a Wi-Fi network to choose. Just closes that Wi-Fi select screen and remains in a tap to adopt status. This has happened before and then one day it worked again. Not so this time so far.

I love the app in general. Only thing that needs to be fixed that I can think of right now is the multiview. Every time I set it up on a browser it works, but once I try to access it through any kind of iOS device, my preset positions for the camera won’t show and everything it’s just 360.

I love this app and Unifi protect, However it needs to have a sleep on the notifications so that if movement happens during regular Hrs say in a showroom or a parking lot. Yes please record said motion but I don’t need a notification every 40 seconds that the same person is still walking around the showroom. Some kind of sleep on motion alerts and Bam!! This app and feature 100% AWESOME!!

For those who live in areas with little or unreliable internet, this app is useless. I can’t see my own cameras on my own network when the internet is down. Got a farm or land in the mountains and want to see if the horses are good in their stalls or if the bear is gone? Too bad. The app won’t let you directly connect to hardware you own on your own property. It sounds insane, but it’s clear the developers either don’t care or don’t relate to what the digital decide is like, as such a basic feature seems beyond their interest. I really regret this camera system.

The Infrared will NEVER engage if there is a light in the picture (even if the light is pointed to the ground). Camera trips indicating motion but unable to see what is out there due to not being in Infrared mode at night. My only fix at the moment is to turn on Infrared at night and turn it back off in the morning manually. If can’t be fixed then I suggest adding the ability for me to put Infrared on a timer so I don’t have to do it manually.

The Unifi Protect line of cameras and ingenious software is the best available! Hands down. As a security integrator, when we install a unifi system and hand over the keys, our customers never look back! It’s so easy to use and the software is extremely intuitive compared to most all other manufacturers in the market! Keep it up Ubiquiti!! 👏👏👍

For the past month or so when watching live video feed or playback, after a few mins all the video feeds go grey and the only way to get them back is to close out the app and restart it. Haven’t noticed this with the website version, only the iOS app. Happens on multiple devices. All of them up to date with iOS and app versions.

This camera system and app is great. My only annoyance is I have to dive 5 menus deep to shut of detection notifications when my kids are just outside and then remember to turn them back on. This app needs a setting on the homepage to silence notifications or toggle them back on. Most competitive apps like Arlo, Ring, Wyze all have this basic app function. This would make it a 5 of 5 stars for me! PLEASE ADD!!!

I've used many camera solutions in my career spanning over 25 years. unify products that ubiquity offers are a great value, work extremely well in all kinds of weather, and are very easily repaired or replaced if they do break. making these some of the best products I've used in years.

I have found UniFi to be difficult to purchase, install, connect and to keep running. Software updates are not automatically installed nor am I notified of them. Customer service is almost non-existent. Feels like help, if it comes at all is begrudgingly provided and the attitude I’ve experienced makes me believe they think there must be something wrong with me if I bought their product. I would not recommend this product and would not buy it again. At this time, the system still does not work.

I like the app, but the geofence just doesn’t work well. I’ll be away and my wife is at home and I’ll be constantly getting camera alert notifications. Everything is set correctly to only alert when no one is on site, and the site is set correctly for our adddeess. I’ll have to have her open the app and then it stops. Kind of useless if it can’t just work all the time. Her location is set to always on the app, so it’s definitely an issue with the app not updating correctly when in the background.

Overall pretty satisfied except for the image identification software. Between random spider webs and white squirrels, the notifications are driving me crazy. Something will get caught in a spiderweb directly in front of a camera and the slightest puff of wind will make it move. This causes notifications at 2 AM so I have to go out and clear the camera. Very frustrating at times.

It’s a pretty decent app. Nice look to the user interface. Ubiquiti needs much better documentation overall, their products are not intuitive, especially with regards to this app and how to add users for the doorbell. I did eventually figure it out however, but I can’t give 5 stars until the app becomes easier to use or user guides/documentation improves.

This last update has been the buggiest I’ve ever experienced. When I open the app, it opens to a black screen until I swipe down to scroll through cameras. I also have been getting a crazy amount of notifications. If someone walks out the door, I get about 5-6 in a 30 second interval.