Arlo Secure: Home Security

Review by eFreeware

Arlo Secure is the companion app for Arlo's home security hardware, made by Arlo Technologies, Inc. It's a free download in the Lifestyle category, and its job is to put cameras, video doorbells and floodlight cameras under one roof so you can watch over a property without sitting at a desk. The reason I'd consider it is simple: it covers both the everyday routine of arming and disarming a system and the less common moments when you want a record of what happened or help on the way.

The app has been on Google Play since September 2019 and has passed five million installs, with a 4.1 average across more than 236,000 ratings. Those numbers tell you this is a mainstream tool rather than a niche one, and that plenty of households have folded it into their daily routine. It is free to download, though it contains ads and offers in-app purchases, and several of the features the developer highlights sit behind a paid plan.

What appeals to me most is the framing: one app for a whole property, inside and out, rather than a separate view for each device. If you already own Arlo hardware, this is the piece that ties it together, and the rest of this review looks at what it does, what it asks of you and where the costs land.

The pitch: monitoring without watching

The main draw is live monitoring from security experts, day and night. Rather than relying on you to check feeds and interpret what you see, the service watches the property so you don't have to. That is the part of the app the developer leads with, and it is the clearest dividing line between this and a plain camera viewer.

Next to it is Emergency Response, which the developer says lets you summon the emergency services to your address with one tap. In a situation where every second of fumbling matters, a single button in the app is a sensible design choice, and it is the feature I'd expect to matter most to people who want a safety net rather than a hobby.

There is an important limit here: Emergency Response is available in the United States only, and it depends on the wider Arlo Secure setup rather than the app alone. So the most reassuring parts of the pitch are the parts with the most strings attached, and that is worth weighing before you commit.

Everyday controls: modes, schedules and zones

Day to day, the app is built around arming and disarming your system in modes, with a single tap doing the work. You can set schedules so the system arms or disarms itself at times you choose, which suits households with predictable rhythms: the school run, the workday, the evening. If your week is less regular, the manual tap is still there.

Activity zones let you mark off parts of a camera's view so that movement outside those zones doesn't set off notifications. It is meant to cut down unwanted alerts, which addresses the usual complaint about camera systems: being told about every passing car and swaying branch. Which camera you own decides whether you get it, and a paid Arlo Secure plan is needed once the trial ends.

Object Detection goes a step further and tells you when the system has spotted a person, a package, a vehicle or an animal. That distinction is genuinely useful: a notification about a delivery is worth reading, while one about a shadow is not. Like the other advanced pieces, it depends on a paid plan and on having a compatible Arlo camera, doorbell or floodlight camera in place.

One dashboard, several addresses

The dashboard is the app's home base, showing the status of your property and gathering the controls in one place. That screen also lets you arm or disarm the system, call up Emergency Response and watch video from recorded events. It is the sort of layout that rewards a quick glance rather than a long session, which is how most people actually use a security app.

The app also handles multiple locations at once, so a second home, a rental property or a relative's house can live in the same account. That is a meaningful convenience if you are responsible for more than one address, and it avoids the awkwardness of logging in and out of separate accounts to check on each one.

Feeds cover missed event details, so activity that happened while you were busy or asleep is still there to review. With an Arlo Secure plan and compatible hardware, you can look back over 30 days of video, which turns the app from a live viewer into something closer to a record you can return to. The length of that history is tied to the plan, so it is one more item to factor into the cost.

What the app asks of you

This is a companion app, not a standalone security system. It works with Arlo cameras, video doorbells and floodlight cameras, so the hardware comes first and the app is what you use to run it. If you don't own that hardware, there is nothing here to control.

Activity Zones also needs the paid plan and a supported camera. So the free download is the entry point, not the whole package, and anyone budgeting for a system should price the plan alongside the cameras.

The latest version supports Arlo Early Warning System features, which are limited to some regions and certain new Arlo Secure plans, and it also includes the usual stability, bug and performance work. That regional and plan-based framing runs through the whole product, and it is the main thing to check against your own address before buying in.

How I'd approach setting it up

I'd start with the dashboard and the modes, because those are the controls you'll touch every day. Deciding what "armed" means for your household, and setting a schedule that matches when people come and go, removes most of the friction before you ever look at a notification. Get that right and the app fades into the background, which is what you want from a security tool.

Next I'd spend the effort on activity zones, since they are the difference between useful alerts and noise. Marking off the sidewalk, the street or a neighbor's driveway means the notifications you do get are worth opening. Because the feature varies by camera model, it is worth checking what your particular camera supports before you plan around it.

Only then would I think about the paid tier, and I'd think about it in terms of what I actually want: a record of past events, alerts that name what was spotted, or the monitoring and response services. Those are distinct needs with distinct value, and the developer ties them together under one plan. If none of them matter to you, the free app still gives you the core controls; if they do, the plan is part of the purchase, not an optional extra.

A companion app for Arlo households

Arlo Secure is a well-established companion app for Arlo's security hardware, and it does the job you'd expect: one place to arm and disarm, check the status of a property, review events and, in the United States, call for help. The 4.1 rating across a large number of reviews suggests it has settled into that role for a lot of households, and the recent update shows the developer is still adding to it.

The caveats are structural rather than incidental. It needs Arlo cameras, doorbells or floodlight cameras to be of any use, it carries ads and in-app purchases, and the features that make the strongest pitch, monitoring, emergency response, object detection and video history, sit behind a paid plan and, in one case, a single country. None of that is hidden, and the developer is upfront about it, but it does mean the app is one part of a larger purchase.

If you already have Arlo hardware, or you are building a system around it, this is the natural place to manage it, and the combination of modes, schedules, zones and multiple locations covers the everyday work well. If you are looking for a standalone app to turn an existing phone into a security tool, this isn't that, and the hardware requirement settles the question before the plan ever comes into it.

What's new in version 7.1.0

This app release supports new Arlo Early Warning System features (available in select regions with certain new Arlo Secure plans). This release also includes general stability, bug fixes and performance improvements.