SwitchBot Reviews

by Climbmnts

SwitchBot appears to be written by a first grader. It certainly make no consideration for the elderly, vision impaired or handicapped. The icons are super tiny. Trying to hit one involves a 50-50 chance of hitting the edit function for that button. The status ring and confirmation “bingo” are equally as small. The “bingo” also is all the way across the screen. A challenging test with perfect vision and youthfully nimble small fingers while waking to activate the coffee pot half asleep. Handicapped, elderly, vision and impaired need not apply. Oh I know, you can add siri for more money and painstaking technical setup, but really.........

by IDSPISPOPDI

You know how you can tell that some apps are probably somebody’s first? Yeah. And it’s bad. This whole setup has exactly one thing going for it:

I didn’t have to register for an account.

Which is rad. But I’m not ok with the scheduler. There are ways to have a user pick dates and times. Apple builds these things in for a reason. SwitchBot doesn’t use the Apple stuff, it reinvents the wheel, and that wheel rolls with a wobble.

There are only five schedule slots, total. Why? Who knows. Maybe it has literally under a kb of storage. This wouldn’t be a *huge* issue except that it’s lacking another basic feature — how many times does it press and how long? When you schedule an event, it represents one button push. There’s no way to expand on that and say “press twice” or “press and hold.”

Truly disappointing. The hardware seems ok, but SwitchBot renders it nearly useless.

by Zeladada

Can’t even create an account. After spending over $50 on these devices I can’t use them for what I intended to use them for because I can’t create an account. I get a message “unexpected token “<“ in JSON position 0” after trying to verify my email when creating an account, then “cannot verify user, user status is CONFIRMED” when trying again. Tried a couple times with different emails, no luck. I can’t believe such basic functionality isn’t there…

by Ali Radwani

The products are good, but the software is just buggy and glitches. I have a routine that at night it closes all the lights and turns on the AC , and closes the curtains. But each time there is always the same thing, one of them is set to turn off the light, but it decides to open it instead. It needs a lot of work. If the light was off and the routine runs, then it decides to open the light instead of keeping it closed. It’s getting harder to like this

by Beinthenotes

As usual of many apps, it asks for “Always Allow” location permission without explaining why, or how that’s going to be used. I declined, but connected to BT and gave it what else it asked for. So it detected my Bot, cycled the motor through one spin, but that was it. Bot detection then disappeared as a listed bot to be controlled. GUI is unintuitive and of no apparent help thus far. It should have been easy. A wizard should be helping me decide how to set it up. The printed instructions also tell you things to do without explaining why - e.g., stick it where you want to use it first, even before assessing how it works. No thanks -what a dumb idea: commit first, check and see how it works later. That’s as bad advice is bots as in marriage. So, the struggle to figure out how to use it and how to connect it to Alexa continues. Terrible.

by CappyD

Running v4.0.1 of app on series 6 Watch on latest watchOS (and iOS), the Bot works fine from the iPhone app but the watch app shows “Loading...” then is just blank - no card shows for the Bot. The secondary screen you can swipe to is also blank. BTW, I’m not using a hub.

The watch app seems to have no complications available for use on the watch faces. Need to add them for all complication sizes.

by Slawles

I was thinking this would have a repeat press option, anywhere from every few seconds to a number of minutes or hours. It only allows repeat by day at a given time. Completely pointless for what I needed it for. Probably going to just return it and look for a better option. 😐

by Bojangles' Third Eye

When motion is detected, I tap the notification which brings me to SwitchBot . I spend another 2 minutes tapping the icon to bring up the camera and nothing happens. Approximately 6 out of 10 times motion is detected, I just get up and walk across the house to figure out what’s going on. The delay is long enough to be dangerous if something bad happens. Buy elsewhere and trust these reviews!

by Jebswebs

I opened a support ticket last week when I noticed the three older small thermometers were not reporting data to SwitchBot past March 30. New version of SwitchBot was released today but did not resolve the issue. There has been no response from SwitchBot developer since the initial contact. So I need to make everyone know that SwitchBot does not work. Perhaps that will get their attention.

by Techiemac

Neat concept but SwitchBot has a really bad user experience. It’s taken a lot of googling just to figure out how to even toggle the switch. I mean, it’s there on SwitchBot screen, tap, it goes into the setting screen. Huh?
I finally figured out if you tap the teeny tiny circle in the switch card it works.
This could be great with some basic UX design with proper affordances. But for now, the overall unboxing experience, documentation, was really rough.

by Eko2crossfire

Just got 2 of the thermometer/humidity meter plus and I can’t the widget on my iPhone to work at all, not even with restarting. I want a quick way to see my temps with the widget, please fix!

by Al Zal

The this app functions with manual activation but can have only five time schedules, so if you plan to water a plant or work out an AC then you need to get a Hub as well to use the scenes. This is a commercial minded approach and wonder when the monthly subscription would be imposed.

Customer service is non responsive and documents and help entries are not clear.

by DQaz

Thanks for fixing the scheduling functionality! Huge difference when using the scheduling feature. I would still like to either set up another schedule (6 total) or a way to set it to run every ‘x’ mins (i.e. every 10 mins).

by Play It You'll Love It

Overall, great product and decent app. Feature request: would be really nice if there was support for Apple Shortcuts. That would allow a user to say, “Siri, make a coffee” and the this app could be activated to start the coffee machine. This would provide great additional functionality without having to buy the cloud hub.

by IPaderOne

I just purchased my first device from this company, the Hub Mini. I added a “Other” device for IR candles using learned remote commands which works fine from the iOS app. I successfully connected the this app skill to my Alexa account. However, the candle devices did not get discovered in Alexa. It turns out that you need to create scenes in the this app app. Those scenes are what gets discovered/integrated into Alexa. Works great! Thanks!

by Caranoelle22

App works great, never encountered any issues after a month of using it. Would like to see some enhancements in SwitchBot line recurring presses after a certain intervals feature. For example every 5, 10, 15 minutes. Also would love to be able to schedule more than 5 presses.

by SmashJams

I have 2 switchbots and a hub to control outside the home. Been great so far. I mostly use these bots to control my bathroom fan, makes it very convenient and easy to turn of after a set amount of time. I can either turn it on or off or set a schedule which is great.

Only one big improvement addition that would make it better is having a timer feature that counts down. You can either set a time or pick from a default menu. This would be so much better to have aside from scheduling. For example I can set the timer to just go off in 5 or 10mins.

by LOOKITUPWOKE

Works great but can you guys make a setting where it gives me a option in SwitchBot to make repeated presses for every 4 minutes untill I want it to stop. It only lets me put 5 timed presses really wished it had unlimited set presses

by Chessforsuccess

I like SwitchBot. It is simple to use. May I make a suggestion that I would appreciate you implement if possible. I need the timer to set the switch not to perform a command at a set time and then turn off shortly after. The shortest interval of time between having the this app click a button twice is one minute. Therefore, please make it possible for the this app to click something more than once in under a minute (maybe it clicks it once at 12:01:10 then 12:01:20. Thank you!

by Purrax

I was looking for a simple device to push a button to start my tile stove when I am on my way home and want a warm place when I arrive.

First I had my doubts if a young startup can deliver a great solution for my problem - but it is not only a great solution for pushing a single button - it was a great experience:
Ordering worked as expected, the packaging is simple but elegant and the design of the SwitchLink (hub for remote access) is really beautiful. I didn‘t expect to be able to change the colors within SwitchBot !
I have some products from the Philips Hue family but this hub in form of a cloud is really unique and I am sure some people would buy it just because it is a wonderful lamp.

There are only 2 issues that I hope will be fixed soon:
The IFTTT support is not available yet and the Apple Watch app is not supporting the ‘light switch add-on’ mode (on/off setting).
After all I really recommend this innovative product!

by DennisEH691

I was excited to try this new device but when I went to setup the this app Hub in SwitchBot , SwitchBot would just go to a “scanning” mode and would not stop scanning. Very frustrating to not even get to test the new device (this app Hub) because of an apparent software issue.

by Promyk

In the last few months I emailed from SwitchBot the customer service 3 times. I did not get any response. One of my curtain bots came defective and won’t work properly.

No help with the unit whatsoever.

On Kickstarter, the response is to wait because of the massive volume of problem reports they have from other customers. That just isn’t right.

Stay away from this til they figure their product/customer service out (or they go bankrupt and the company vanishes.) Such a disappointment and a waste of money.

by Andrew Did A Review

I wouldn’t buy from these guys if you value customer service & refund policies. They barely respond to messages and refuse to refund without “video proof” of their product simply not working for my home. This is 2021... refunds are a thing and customers should come first.

Based on the communications, they are some get rich fast losers.

by JoeyDeeee

Overall SwitchBot functions but every day that I don’t open SwitchBot to I guess “refresh” the time, the SwitchBots will open and close later and later each day. This is really annoying.

by Michef

Hi, the 4/17 upgrade messed up the switch recognition. Now all my switches show on/off even if they are in “push” mode. It also says “cannot contact device” after you can hear clearly that the switch did work.
Not a really good upgrade.
Please bring back the old functionality. And fix the problem caused by the update.

by Anthonysim

Yes I have selected “Disable Bluetooth status reminder“ but it still pops up with reminders randomly all the time. Pretty annoying. The rest of SwitchBot is kind of confusing and vague too. I could really do without SwitchBot completely. At least the bot plays nice with my IFTTT, Google Assistant and Shortcuts.

by Mfox100

SwitchBot doesn’t appear in the list of apps to make a shortcut with. That was one of the main selling points for me. Hopefully they fix that bug.

by Soysight

I would easily give this product five stars if it added HomeKit or Siri shortcut to SwitchBot . And improved Apple Watch functionality.

by Noah Len

Awesome concept and exactly what I need. Just would love to set more scheduled presses than 5, or even an hourly schedule would be ideal as well.

by Erelone

Fantastic little set up with the hub + robots, and honestly SwitchBot is great, fast and responsive. Works with Shortcuts, what else can you ask for!