My spouse can view the live feed from our cameras on her phone, but the “Playback” option is not there like it is on my phone. What must I do so that she has the “Playback” option on her phone?
What I do is log in to my Wyze account with my credentials on my wife’s phone. She then has the same access to cameras I do.
I do ask my wife Not to change settings or update camera firmware.
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Wyze has not enabled the ability to share SD card playback to shared accounts. When I asked about this in an Ask me anything event, they indicated it was for security reasons because they can’t limit the shared person to only view recordings after the date it was shared to them. They are able to do this with cloud events, but not with playback, so they just don’t allow sharing playback.
I’ve offered solutions to this, but I doubt they will implement any of them anytime soon.
For now I do as stated above and just give my wife access to my account and showed her how she can mute notifications instead of turn them off when I still want them.
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OK. Thanks to Steven and Carver.
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I just realized this evening when setting up another share and seeing it what the share recipient sees in their end that SD card playback isn’t available. Seems to me like less of a security issue and more of a tactic to upsell more Cam Plus and similar subscription services. How much footage could possibly be on the SD card prior to the share date when SD Cards record over previously recorded footage as soon as they hit capacity? iirc, Wyze states (or used to state) that the SD card size limit of the v3 was maxed at 32GB, Recording continuously, that’s about 2-3 days (1-1½ days at 16GB and so on) Of course, the v3 can use much larger SD cards, I’ve only confirmed up to 128GB but even then we’re only talking about 10-12 days give or take.
The better solution would be to make it something that the sharer (share-er? Probably not) could chose to share or not depending upon whether they’re comfortable with the sharee (share-ee? No, def not) potentially having access to anywhere from 1-12 days or so from the time the recipient is sent share access until the footage is recorded over, thus making it a non-issue. I’m not so naive to believe a change to this policy is in any way likey, not for older hardware, anyway. So rather than just be a (VVyze) guy on the forum whining about it, I thought I would ask if anybody has come up with creative solutions for working around this limitation of the app.
TBH, I don’t actually see room for a workaround all, since the SD card is housed in the camera itself and I don’t see how you could interface with that through a 3rd-Party app/service or otherwise, but the number of times I’ve thought there was no way forward only to find that alI was wrong / somebody had to come up with something clever has left me somewhat skeptical of my gut’s adamant claims of infeasibility.
@carverofchoice, you’re usually good at finding workarounds, though, in this case it looks like either you didn’t find one or you decided to forgo the search and instead go the easy route of sharing your login information. While effective, for this particular use case it won’t (doesn’t) work as I’d gone that route for reasons other than playback access previously. Let’s just say I love this individual with all of my heart, but they cannot be trusted to not randomly go toggling lights and smart plugs etc. (e.g., I have my my primary PC, a secondary machine running network shares and webservers, etc., and an SBC running Pi-hole all plugged in to smart plugs and on multiple occasions found one or more (usually all 3) powered down (or powered on but clearly having been reset), or worse yet, I’d be in the middle of something only to have power cut very abruptly, which is a great way to bork whatever storage medium you system uses as the primary, as inopportune power loss has got to be the leading cause of data corruption and if occurs in the middle of an update - there goes the neighborhood. Add this to the countless times that lights were toggled on and off without any user interaction on my part and well, the decision was made that this person had their carte blanche rescinded LOL.
I’d be grateful for anyone’s input or even just spitballing of 4ideas for potential workarounds.
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I wish I had a nickel for every time someone makes that accusation related to any and all issues with Wyze cams, including problems with the users internet service, power, the weather, etc. Why would they allow SD card access for you but not for your shared user if they’re in fact trying to force you into a subscription?
There is no app workaround.
The other workarounds are messy, which is why sharing the login is the preferred/easy path (nothing wrong with doing things the easy way).
-Install the old unsupported RTSP firmware, set up an NVR that you both have access to. This firmware has security flaws and may stop working at any time.
-Use Wyze Bridge or Tiny Cam server which will let you do RTSP with up to date firmware. However sometimes when Wyze changes something, you have to wait for these app developers to update their app, so you’ll be down for days or possibly weeks. Definitely do not update firmware on the cams until it is confirmed working with the app, and even then, if Wyze changes something backend or authentication related, you’ll still be down (but you’ll have SD cards as backup, the other person just loses access).
-Android has a sandboxing functionality (not sure if iOS does) so you could create two wyze accounts and run two copies of the app alongside each other. One account for the cams where you share your login info, and one for other smart stuff that you don’t. If you have automations that involve a mix of the cams and the other devices, you’d need to share the cams to the non-cam account and have the automations run there (and there will likely be some limits to this setup). Depending on android version it will either be built in or you can get an app to do it like Parallel Space or similar (never used it, I do use the native sandbox functionality though).
As you can see, none of these are clean, easy, or ideal, which is why @carverofchoice and many others have just shared their logins when SD card access is needed.
Easier options
-Tell the person if they need a video, you can email/share it to them
-Subscribe to Cam Plus, obviously a cost involved, but if you figure the electricity to run an NVR 24x7 and the up front costs, it may end up cheaper.
-Replace the cams with another brand (I’m not sure if others have this functionality, there is probably a brand out there though). As far as I know Ring and Blink both only support it for subscribers, not sure on the rest.
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So you want a bunch of nickels for something that is clearly a pervasive thought in the collective mind of Wyze users (not counting the ridiculous accusations where people are just looking to blame shift, of course), seemingly suggesting that no person who’s ever suggested that Wyze, a for-profit, publicly traded company with all of the obligations and presumably all of the more unsightly stuff that nearly always comes with it, might look to capitalize on opportunities to increase revenue/growth Y.O.Y every year for the rest of time has been wrong for suggesting?
I’m sorry, but that’s only marginally less realistic than people blaming Wyze for their internet troubles. It’s a thing and as a member of a capitalist society, we deal with it until we can’t or won’t anymore and decide to take our dollars (which are effectively individual units of endorsement or votes of confidence and support) elsewhere.
I’m not bashing, just being critical of a policy that seems more rooted in the neverending and very real need to increase profit margins than it is about their concern for our security for precisely the rational and grounded reasons I cited Especially knowing all that we know (which is likely just scratching the surface) about Wyze’s track record where security is concerned.
Plus you have a list of workarounds at the ready, buggy and not ideal though they may be, so it seems maybe you agree with the sentiment more than you let on. Just sayin’
Whatevs, I’m still Team Wyze and you’ll be awarded no nickels from me, thanks much.
Edit - also you removed a ton of context in quoting me, which always comes off as disingenuous IMO.
I don’t mean any offense, ig I’m just trying to establish why you took offense from my post to the extent that you did. No need to take things so personally, as multiple things are allowed to be true simultaneously
The collective mind of thousands of people also thinks the world is flat. I’m not saying Wyze isn’t for profit, I’m saying that every single issue people have with a Wyze camera is not them forcing a subscription on people.
Since when? They’re Private Equity. I’m sure the goal is to go public some day (or be purchased by a large public company). Yes they need to satisfy their private investors, but in reality they are not expected to be profitable until the point they’re ready to go public or be sold off. PE investors understand that, that’s why they get so much reward for their risk when one of their investments does succeed and become public. Yes, subscriber numbers are VERY important to this business model. They’ve been investing in lots of new features for Cam Plus to try and drive that. Look at Mint Mobile, they aggressively sold very cheap plans and phones, offered crazy referral bonuses (I got 3 full years free from referrals alone), and sold to T-Mobile for something like $1 billion. Ryan Reynolds made about 300 million off the sale I believe. They weren’t terribly profitable, but they had the subscriber numbers.
Absolutely, such as discontinuing Cam Lite, which they clearly communicated, and there is no doubt it was done to push subscriptions. They were very up front about the fact that they were going to start breaking even or even losing money on post-Lite cams in order to drive subscriber growth, but the lower cost would come without those Lite features (though you could buy the v3 Pro and get onboard person detection, but at a higher cost). Came right out and said all this in this forum. They did not hide anything about their intent. BUT they also grandfathered in existing users, and those users can still add unlimited cams (that existed at the time of the discontinuation, like the v3 which is still readily available) to their accounts. So why would a company prevent guests from viewing SD in order to push subscriptions, when they could make far more money by completely shutting down Cam Lite? If they’re as shady as you’re implying, they could say new security protocols are not compatible with Cam Lite, or that the infrastructure was end of life and had to be shut down, etc. But if they ever do shut it down, I believe they’ll be honest about it and do it in a phased fashion (no new cameras, then no replacement cameras, then a full discontinuation for example). Maybe even issue those users a free year of Cam Plus or something.
Honestly I don’t believe it is anything to do with policy or intentional at all. The guest accounts are severely lacking in features, and as you say, they want to drive revenue growth, so they’re focusing on new products and new subscription features. I suspect if we ever do see new features added to guest accounts, they’ll probably be mostly for subscribers. And since SD card access isn’t needed for subscribers, that probably won’t be one of the new features. There is basically no motivation for them to add features there, it isn’t really a core functionality that can be used to sell the cameras or make them money. Remember, app development is outsourced, and every little thing you want to do costs money, so you need to have a matching revenue opportunity to justify it.
They weren’t at the ready, I spent time typing out some ideas off the top of my head since you asked for possible workarounds, and I thought maybe one of those would work for you, but also wanted to make it clear that I wasn’t suggesting that any of them are ideal or even acceptable workarounds for many people.
I 100% agree that guest accounts are lacking severely, and not having access to the SD card videos is a major limitation to their usefulness. You won’t hear any argument from me on that. I just don’t think it is intentional to drive revenue. The fact that subscribers can access cloud recordings through guest accounts, which is really a totally different thing and just happens to inherently work with guest accounts, certainly could be a deterrent for them to spend money adding SD access for non-subscribers, so in a way I agree with you a little bit on that aspect.
I felt that part of my reply needed context to make sense, the rest was just a reply to the overall post. If you click on this part on my reply 
you can see the full content of your post that I replied to, since that is automatic figured no need to quote your entire post, just clutters things up.
But hopefully this reply is more to your quoting liking? Honestly it just takes a lot of extra time to quote and reply to specific parts, and I already had spent a lot of time writing up the info on the workarounds. I really prefer the forums that let you quote an entire post and insert your replies inline with it automatically breaking up the quote as you do that. This one makes it more difficult and time consuming to do that.
I guess that’s a matter of opinion. I took no offense, if I had, I would not have attempted to help you. I was just pointing out that it gets very old when this subscription conspiracy theory gets used over and over for everything, and honestly detracts from the credibility of your post, when you’re in fact raising a perfectly valid problem. I guess the overall accusatory and somewhat ranting tone of your post is off putting and will draw similar replies.
Though implying that @carverofchoice took a lazy way out is a bit offensive, that guy spends tons of time writing up long informational posts with all the information anyone could ever want. If there was a workaround, he would have detailed it with razor precision.
Again, must be a matter of opinion, I don’t work for Wyze, I have no skin in the game, nor do I see anything that looks like me taking it personally. My first paragraph simply pointed out that, like I’ve said already, that accusation has gotten old and tired.
It’s all good, I’m not offended, won’t be crying myself to sleep, you have strong opinions, so do I. I can’t say for certain that Wyze employees did not sit in a meeting and say “do not give SD card access to guests, that will drive subscriber growth”, but from everything I’ve seen, it simply looks more likely that they just aren’t investing in developing guest accounts.
There also seems to be a severe staffing issue (one of the many drawbacks of Private Equity) which is impacting non-revenue improvements. They’ve been fairly upfront about that also (in a roundabout way, I don’t think their investors would appreciate Wyze employees saying “they laid a bunch of people off now we can’t do anything for our existing users”). But from what has been posted, it is pretty easy to see that is the case. The “wish list” forum has basically become ignored, where a year ago it was showing signs of good progress on multiple things. “Fix it Friday” which helped get lots of bugs and issues and even new features addressed, is gone. One employee that was very active in the forum left Wyze (by her own accord) but one assumes it was due to differences of opinion or financial reasons, or both. It was clear from the wording that it wasn’t exactly a happy exit.
Yes, capitalism at its finest, I just think the impact is on different things than you do, that’s all.
Now that’s a long winded reply that @carverofchoice and @ssummerlin can be proud of. Though they’re much better at finding and linking other posts for citation value, I’m too lazy for that.
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I am proud of you, my son. 
Good write-up and follow-up. You gave information and remained calm.
Enjoy your patience and restraint. I find mine evaporating as I get older.
As far as the group saying the world is flat, I am glad we have the freedom to think for ourselves. Only dead fish go with the flow.
Mine was always limited and a bit more leaks out every day.
Or in this case, swim off the end of the earth.
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Dave listed most of the workarounds I am aware of. I have used the Docker Wyze Bridge and Tiny Cam workarounds to get RTSP and save recordings to my Synology NAS or my UniFi DMSE harddrives and can share recordings with family members there. It has been a reasonable workaround. Wyze has recently been announcing publicly that they are working to bring RTSP back to their cameras natively. In addition to statements made in the forums, they spoke with some tech sites about it recently, so it seems to definitely be making progress that direction. TheVerge recently interviewed CMO Wyze Cofounder Dave Crosby, and listed some interesting things:
Crosby says they are exploring adding more local processing, something it has on its higher-end cameras. “We want to move more and more to the edge,” he says, adding that could mean new local devices, but didn’t clarify if that’s new cameras or some type of hub for local processing. Wyze is also working on bringing back Real-Time Streaming Protocol, Crosby says. This would let users stream video to a local recording device and/or platforms like Home Assistant.
Sadly, there used to be an actual workaround for people to be able to view the SD card, but they were forced to remove it and patch it. I personally wish they’d never fixed it. It only allowed someone on the same network to view the video files. It couldn’t be accessed remotely, only by someone who had your secure WiFi password and had permission to be on your network, and if you didn’t want everyone on the network having access, you could always turn on device isolation or keep them on the “Guest Network” to prevent anyone seeing the SD card recordings. As far as I was concerned, it is was perfectly what a lot of people had been requesting for years:
But a lot of people freaked out when the news went public, and the fallout probably means Wyze will avoid adding that option intentionally in the moderate future. I only lamented that they were forced to prevent something that was one of the all time most requested features to add INTENTIONALLY, and now they’ve listed that request as “Probably not” because of the public backlash surrounding the issue.
I haven’t totally ruled out the possibility of shared SD cards in the future though. I did talk directly to one of the founders and shared some reasonable workarounds to their security concerns, such as forcing the SD card to be reformatted when the camera is shared. This would remove all past history of recordings (their supposed concern) and thus allow sharing of the playback, though I recommend they make it part of their long term multiple permissions revamp they’re working on…make it a toggle option to share the SD card or not, and then potentially ask whether they want to keep and share past recordings, or format the SD card and only show future recordings. That would be the ideal solution. I have no idea if they will really consider those options, but I did suggest it as a solution to consider while they’re revamping permissions.
I think most of the realistic workarounds were listed though. I think the best option available at the moment is an RTSP converter that allows video to go through an IP video software system that allows those nuanced sharing options. It is just too tedious for most people to implement.
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I haven’t read anything about that directly from Wyze since this back in January:
That and the Wishlist topic are what I tend to think of when topics like this spring up.
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Actually I think I meant to say @crease so that probably didn’t make any sense. It was a long week.
Oof. That guy. 
I was trying to set a record. Probably failed. I’m sure @carverofchoice probably has the high score somewhere.
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For long winded reply? Yes I’m sure I have the record. I made a post that was so long I found out there is a maximum character limit per post 
It wouldn’t let me post it [until I divided it into multiple posts]
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