If you have a Nest Protect smoke detector, you’ll want to make sure that its software is up to date. On Tuesday, Nest officially recalled 440,000 Nest Protect smoke detectors, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, because of an issue that could prevent the alarm from sounding right away in case of a fire.
The Nest Protect’s “wave” feature lets you temporarily disable the alarm with a wave of the hand—useful if you accidentally trigger the alarm while cooking dinner or burning toast. But Nest admitted in April that under certain circumstances, the feature could misinterpret other movements or gestures as waves, inadvertently preventing the alarm from going off.
As you might imagine, this could be a problem in the event of an actual fire, though the company has not received any reports of property damage resulting from this problem.
Nest has temporarily removed the Nest Protect from store shelves as a precaution. The company is still working on a permanent fix to the wave glitch according to an earlier letter from CEO Tony Fadell, but in the meantime, it has released a Nest Protect software update that disables the wave feature.
The update will get pushed to your Nest Protect automatically, so make sure your Nest Protect is connected to your home Wi-Fi network, and connected to your Nest Account.
Next, log into Nest Sense via a Web browser or the Nest app with your Nest account, and check to see if the Nest Wave toggle is off and grayed out. If it is, your Nest Protect has the software update already installed. If not, check back later—it may take up to 24 hours for the update to get applied, according to the company.
For a full FAQ on what this problem means to you, visit the Nest Protect’s safety page.