SkyBell Reviews

Terrible.

1.) Activity clips take forever to process for review. Once they are you have a small window to check them out, if not they are all of a sudden unavailable unlike the 1st this app app. Activity clips are basically useless.

2.) It’s been mentioned before, but you can “pinch zoom” in activity view and live view.

3.) Live view takes a lot longer to upload compared to the 1st this app app as well. It even times out occasionally when I never had issues in the past.

I wish we can go back to old app. I’m currently looking to switch altogether to a new video bell because this is now useless. Not sure who approved this, but they probably use a Ring or other option because there is no way they would like the update.

You can no longer keep your videos for longer than a couple days. It automatically deletes them, and there’s no option to change the length of time videos are kept. I’m out of town a lot and use my this app for security, I recently had a package stolen, but this app had already deleted the video from that day. I never agreed to have my videos deleted. I keep my videos for security. I also can no longer download videos which I had once utilized to help police catch the person who vandalized my neighbor’s car. And the way that the videos are organized now is just terrible and not user-friendly.

The new app is junk. Videos don’t appear. Events are listed by date but when you select the date to see the events nothing happens. Most the time when trying to watch live, it’s a black screen. When doorbell is rung, there is no sound. Absolute junk. The old app worked perfectly. How am I supposed to make use of my this app when SkyBell doesn’t work now. Now that I converted over I can’t use the old app. Thanks for nothing. Fix it.

I’ve had this app since it hit first hit the market and while not perfect, I decided the slow response time and occasional glitches were fair trade for a device that doesn’t require a monthly service plan.

Then, late last year some brain trust at this app thought it was a good idea to release a new app that was obviously untested and not ready for production. In December I made multiple attempts to setup the new app, which failed. The all black UI with giant yellow and red font looked like something an 8 year old would create. The instructions were unclear … if there were any at all.

After three calls with customer support, my this app was offline for more than two months. Today I made my last attempt to reconnect. I noticed minimal effort to clean up the horrendous app UI, however I now have very little confidence in this app. After connecting, it takes over a minute for a live view to display… and a notice that my device is offline still appears when I start up SkyBell . Since a live view does eventually appear… the “device offline” is yet another glitch.

If this device goes down again, I am switching to another brand. Too bad… my preference is for the round design of the this app. That said, I can’t go without front door security so will be forced to switch if this app continues to be unreliable. Buyer beware.

Must give access to my phone microphone to VIEW door camera live! Old app did not require this. Forced to switch to SkyBell. They disabled the old app making my door camera worthless.
UPDATE: The company responded and said that microphone access was always required. This is not true. I was able to deny access to my microphone and still use the camera on the doorbell live. I only had to toggle permission for the microphone on if I wanted to speak to someone at the door. Then I could toggle it off.

If they are really looking to improve SkyBell , this is what they need to do first. Make the live feed viewable without providing access to my phone microphone and put a quick link there to my settings if I want to toggle it back on real quick.
Without that ability, I would never recommend this to anyone and I’m considering just tearing it out and tossing it.

I don’t want to sacrifice privacy for perceived security or convenience. I’d rather have an old-school doorbell.

Does not work well even on the most sensitive settings. A person has to be within four or five feet of the this app camera to register. The camera is about twenty feet from my driveway and is pointed right at it but when I drive into the garage from the driveway, it does not even register a recording. Cars passing on the street do not register a recording.
this app HD did register some cars and trucks. But even it did not record people walking by on sidewalk right in the camera’s view. Inconsistent.
But the this app HD did a real good job of picking up shadow movement. Got many recordings of nothing. Totally unsatisfied.

I would give zero stars if I could! Ever since switching over to the new app about 2 1/2 months ago, we haven’t been able to connect to the live stream not even once. We have 1Gig of fiber internet, you can’t really get much better, so we shouldn’t have a problem at all. I’ve emailed back and forth with support, sent in screenshots and none of their suggestions helped at all. The livestream is one of the most important features. If my motion detection goes off while I’m not home, I’m not able to see who’s there or what’s going on until 5 minutes after the fact because the live won’t connect and even the recordings take a few minutes before they will actually load… I didn’t have any of these problems with the old app & of course they would make it where you can’t go back… extremely frustrating & disappointing!!

I switched over to the new app and have not been able to replicate even the most basic functions that I had on the old app. this app tech support folks were kind and patient with me on two calls, but they were unable to solve my problems. I now have only a doorbell that rings outside, not on my iPhone. Despite a reboot and settings review with tech support, I have no motion activations and no notifications for doorbell or motion. I’m kicking myself for switching and there’s no hope for a fix in sight. Tech support indicated that the new app may not yet be totally compatible with my Trimline Plus model, but until the glitches are resolved, I’m stuck with basically no doorbell. Please fix SkyBell before going live.

I have been using this app for 5 years now and the past several months have been a nightmare for me. I have 2 homes I split my time between and was using my this app to keep an eye on the outside of my home (located in Florida). In the past year I havent been able to rely on SkyBell (upgrading SkyBell made it worse). When I open SkyBell the feed just spins, wont load. It has stopped recording "events". I cant respond when someone is at my door because by the time everything loads they are walking off. I tried rebooting, that didn't work, tried removing the camera and then re-adding and guess what, I have to be in Florida (which I wont be for another 2 months). Currently, hurricane Milton is passing over my house and my Wyze cams are working great, my this app, not so much! So frustrated and feel like an idiot because I have (up until the last few months) been recommending this app to my friends and family.

We used our Sky Bell with the Sky Bell HD app. It worked just fine. Recently, we got a notification saying that the old app was going to be discontinued and we had to switch to this one. For the most part, it works just fine… but notifications of any kind of activity in front of my door no longer are noticeable unless the phone is in my hand; basically just sends a soft chirp and buzz. The notifications were much more obvious to me with the previous app (I could hear and feel it with my phone in my pocket).

Aside from the poor resolution and choppy/static audio of the camera itself, SkyBell is worse. Recorded history is slow to load and the live button never loads on iPad (works on iPhone) running current iOS. The live button just has the spinning circle of death and eventually times out. It has always been glitchy but has not worked for over a week now. Failed to work prior to updating to most recent iPad iOS update. Running on wifi within this app required distance parameters.

I like all the new features. However, SkyBell uses the default tone for notifications on the iPhone so I can’t tell what notification I’m receiving without looking at the iPhone. Ring doorbells have a different notification sound for their app so you know, without even looking at your phone, that your video doorbell is sending an alert. I wish this app would do the same. I called this app tech-support for assistance and was told “the phone settings are out of my expertise”. I also wish their support agents were more properly trained, and at least make an effort to help.

I have a 2017 year this app and loved it for six years until they came out with the new HD app. I migrated to it after a few calls with Customer Support. They were friendly and knowledgeable getting me set up, but SkyBell doesn’t consistently send alerts to my or my wife’s phone when people approach our front door.

I for one would appreciate more detail on fixes. Comments like “Fixed many bugs” doesn’t help anyone understand if the issue they had experienced has been addressed. If your not going to add useful comments, then just state the revision and the date of the change.

The motion zones feature is what was lacking in the previous app. So far it has worked as advertised. I had some concerns about migrating and called in for support. Albert was able to answer all my questions. Thanks Albert!! **Note: you cannot go back to the HD app after you migrate over, support informed me of this and it was also noted in SkyBell .

My new App is working flawlessly with our this app. I have truly been enjoying all of the upgrades. Being able to Manage my this app while on the go has really made our busy days a lot easier, especially when waiting for certain pieces of mail. Great job this app.

Sometimes my Skype just turns off and will not turn back on for days. I have tried rebooting and it still doesn’t work for days adoesn’t work, but when it does work, it works great most of the time it does not work.

My picture quality has decreased with the new app. I changed the setting to a better quality and no luck. I could reorder my devices with the old app. I could also zoom in on my old app. Sorry, Not finding the love for SkyBell.
Please tell me this isn’t so!

I have owned the-original this app and now have the new trim HD and it’s even better, great image and the color night vision is fantastic! The original doorbell with an on demand viewing option, all others copied this app. Buy one you won’t be disappointed!

Motion zones alone are worth the upgrade. I haven’t delved into all the new features yet, but the ability to hone in on where you actually need detection is a huge quality of life improvement for me. So far new app is stable and far more functional.