What To Do With Your Old Nest Gadgets Since Google Ended Support - BGR

There are likely countless devices and appliances in your home or pocket that have some sort of smart functionality, which means one day they may no longer work. Companies such as Google can end support for a product, like Google Nest, at a moment's notice or put out a statement saying service will end at a certain date. When that happens, you're left with an outdated piece of tech, but you don't have to be stuck with the now dumb device.

If you find yourself with a device such as the 1st or 2nd gen Nest Learning Thermostat that's no longer supported by Google, you could do a couple of things with them. Without support, devices no longer have smart capabilities, so you may want to consider recycling them or installing custom firmware to revive the unsupported device. Then again you could also use the Nest item without smart features.

If you want to get rid of an old Nest gadget, recycling it is one path forward. Google even offers a recycling program you can take advantage of. Unsupported devices may no longer have smart connectivity, but they still have hardware inside that can be put to good use. Recycling out of date tech produces less waste in the world and makes space so you can add a new Nest device to replace it and continue your Google Nest subscription.

Google discontinued its Nest brand which included the aforementioned thermostats, in an effort to house all its tech and smart devices within Google Home. If you own any one of a number of Google Nest items including Google Nest Mini and Google Audio, you may want to look at recycling them, or seeing if there's custom firmware that can restore their smart capabilities. As is the case with one community project.

An app developer with the company No Longer Evil has built firmware that's capable of restoring smart features to unsupported tech. One project is focused on building an open-source and free software for Google Nest thermostats that effectively makes them work as intended before Google stopped supporting them. The system essentially sends Nest's data to a custom server that contains a replica of the Nest software.

However, it's worth mentioning that the No Longer Evil firmware is developmental and may not always work correctly. Using it may also cause the thermostat to completely lock up, thus preventing it from being used in the future. It's up to the user to decide if they want to move forward with using the software. A post on Reddit details other users' experiences with the firmware, which many say works and was easy to set up.

Of course, you could always keep your unsupported Google Nest devices and continue to use them without smart connectivity. Once Google ends support for one of its items, it no longer functions with Google Home. However, that doesn't mean it's no longer usable, in fact, many devices may still function manually.

Even if Google no longer provides updates for its 1st and 2nd generation Nest Learning Thermostats, they aren't useless. You can still use the device to manually set the temperature. Google states that you can control the thermostat directly through your device to do a number of things. You can get into the auto-schedule settings to pre-set routines. You can also switch between temperatures and access every feature and setting on the thermostat. You'll need to check other devices to see if that's the case for them.

If you aren't able to find any open-source software to restore old Nest gadgets, you may want to look at repurposing them. You may find clever uses for your old Google tech like turning speakers into Bluetooth devices. Those who've used tech no longer supported by Google say it's a shame that not everything was made open-source and that more companies should do that as things become smarter. Instead of having to buy a new more expensive product to replace their old unsupported device, users would prefer to install custom firmware and get it working once more.