When Early Notification is enabled, your camera sends an alert when motion is first detected. If not enabled, Motion Alerts are sent after the Motion Clip is saved. Learn more about motion detection and notifications.

Early Notification is determined by clip length settings, network speeds, etc., and available for the following Blink devices:

• Blink Outdoor and Indoor (3rd Gen)
• Mini
• XT2

Early Notification is enabled by default and can't be turned off on the Blink Mini 2, Outdoor 4, Wired Floodlight and Video Doorbell.

Why would I use Early Notification?

A real advantage of Early Notification is being able to enter Live View if you tap the Motion Alert notification, when you're within the time frame of that clip length, or five seconds after. In this way, you can be interacting with visitors using two-way voice, or viewing whatever triggered the motion alert, within a few seconds of receiving your notification.

Note: If you pass the five second time frame after the clip has ended, you will be automatically taken to the clip list screen with no clip selected.

Can I save the Live View session?

If you have an active Blink Subscription Plan‍ and your camera supports recording the Live View session, a Save / Discard toggle appears in the live view. When the toggle is set to Save, the current session records until the timeout, or when you stop the Live View by tapping Close.

How do I use Early Notification?

To enable Early Notification:

1. Tap the More  button located at the bottom-right corner of the device thumbnail.
2. Tap Device Settings.
3. Tap Motion Settings.
4. Toggle on Early Notification.

Early Notification is off by default for Blink cameras, as shown in the image.

This article describes how to adjust the retrigger time for your Blink camera. 

Retrigger time is the amount of time between the end a motion capture and beginning of a new motion event. During the retrigger time, your camera does not record motion events. 

By default, the system will capture a five second clip, and wait for the retrigger time of 30 seconds. If motion continues, the camera will capture another five second clip. Retrigger time can be adjusted under Device Settings.

Note: Each camera in your system has an individual retrigger time setting.

Adjusting the Retrigger Time

1. From the Home screen, tap the More  button and then select Device Settings.
2. From the Device Settings screen, tap Motion Settings.
3. In Motion Settings, you can adjust the Retrigger time value from 10 to 60 seconds. To increase the retrigger time, move the slider to the right and to decrease the delay move the slider to the left.
   • The longer the retrigger time is set, your camera allows more time between notifying you of the next motion event it detects. This is useful if your camera views an area where motion occurs often or if you are getting false triggers.
4. When you have this setting where you want it, tap Save.

Test your settings

After you have set your desired retrigger time, Arm your Blink system and then walk through the field of view of your adjusted camera. You will receive a motion alert on your screen. Continue to walk through the field of view of this camera for the length of your delay. You will receive a second motion alert when your system has captured another clip. If the retrigger time was too short or too long between captured clips, return to camera settings to fine tune.

Your Blink camera captures motion based on heat moving across the camera's field. The total size of heat objects and amount of motion together cause a motion event. Your camera's Sensitivity setting adjusts how much input it takes to send you a notification.

Low sensitivity is less responsive, so a larger amount of heat and motion are needed to cause a notification. The highest setting may cause alerts from blowing leaves or even shadows.

If you are receiving too many notifications with nothing interesting, try reducing the Sensitivity down two levels. If that is effective, test by arming the system, and walking in the field of view when Motion Detection is on, to make sure a human sized object will trigger a notification.

Be careful if you tap the notification and enter Live View with your microphone or speakers on, significantly loud feedback may occur. Tap mute speaker in the upper right corner of the Live View.

Each camera has an individual sensitivity setting. You can find this in the Camera Settings for each camera in your system.

Choosing High or Low Sensitivity

The sensitivity setting on your camera not only depends on what is making the movement, but how long the movement is occurring. 

• High sensitivity means less motion over a shorter period of time will create a notification.
• Low sensitivity means more movement over a longer period of time will create a notification. 

The motion can be a big or small object, or a lot of small objects. Motion detection depends on where the object is in relation to the camera lens. For example, a bird flying close to the camera can be perceived as bigger than the person walking on the sidewalk in the distance. A person walking directly toward the camera will produce less motion than a dog walking left to right across the camera's field of view. It's about the amount of motion that's occurring within the detection zone of the camera and not necessarily how large the object is.

Testing sensitivity for your home camera

1. Tap More  on your camera's thumbnail and select Device Settings .
2. Select Motion Settings.
3. On Motion Sensitivity, move the slider two or three increments to the left for a lower numeric setting. Tap Save to save this setting and walk out of the frame of view of this camera.
4. From the main screen of the Blink app, set your system to Armed to enable Motion Detection.
5. Test the camera sensitivity by introducing movement.
6. If the sensitivity is not successful, reduce the slider more, save, and try again.
7. If you have adjusted the sensitivity to your liking, proceed to test with a larger moving object, such as yourself. Walk in front of your camera and check to see if the setting gives the desired motion alert.
8. If the lowest sensitivity continues to cause an unwanted Motion notification, you may need to create an Activity Zone instead. Learn more about setting Activity Zones.

Learn more

• Understanding placement of your Blink Cameras
• Understanding Motion Detection

In order to run the latest version of the Blink app, it's important your mobile device meets the minimum system requirements.

How to auto update your mobile devices

The easiest way to keep the app version of your mobile device current is to turn on the Automatic Update option in your device settings:

• Learn more about how to turn on or turn off automatic updates on the Apple's Support page.
• Learn more about how to update all Android apps automatically on Google Play Help.

How to manually update your mobile devices

• iOS devices can also be updated manually, which may be necessary if the auto update hasn't occurred yet. Learn more about manually updating your iOS device.
• Learn more checking and updating your Android app version.