Wyze anti-user dark patterns

ive been using wyze for years. just got a new cam and detection mode is such a cash grab now.

only take photo of event? okay, i have an sd card recording, at the very least, take me to playback of the event.

but you don’t because are pushing your crappy cloud service. i didn’t mind a small video clip or even the artificial cool down. but a thumbnail is just a big f you to your users.

dumping all my cameras to an rtmp camera stream and bailing on wyze as my NVR.

please don’t gimp your own product just to upsell a service. never buying wyze again this kind of dark pattern BS

also i can’t use my cam plus lite account with any new cameras… way too walk back on that agreement. lame af

If you’re recording to microSD (I use Continuous recording in all of my Wyze cameras), then you should have access to the recordings, but the UI changes from time to time (often without significant announcements) and doesn’t always seem as intuitive as it could be. For instance, as a non-subscriber, if I’m viewing an item from the Events tab, then I see the thumbnail grab with a button below that, and tapping that prompts me to subscribe. What I have to do instead is tap the SD Card button (I may need to tap the screen once to make the additional controls at the bottom visible first) in order to initiate playback from the card, because the regular play button is for cloud recordings.

It’s a little frustrating but generally works once you’re used to it. One problem is that there’s also apparently a bug afflicting some cameras/models whereby tapping the microSD card icon for playback presents the user with a message that no card is present even when there is one. Because of stuff like that, I tend to just go straight to the camera and navigate the microSD card timeline below the viewer pane if I’m looking to review a specific incident.

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