When early notification is turned on, your camera sends a notification to your mobile device as soon as motion is detected. If early notification is turned off, the notification is sent after the clip has been recorded and is available to view in the clip list. Learn more about motion detection and motion notifications.

What happens when you receive an early notification?

When you tap a motion notification while a clip is still recording, you'll be taken directly to the clip list where a "Recording in progress" message will appear. Once the clip finishes recording, it will automatically update to "The clip is ready to view."

If you exit the clip list before the clip has finished recording, a banner will appear at the bottom of the app letting you know that a new clip is available to view.

Early notification availability

Early notification is available for:

• Outdoor and Indoor (3rd Gen)
• Mini
• XT2
• Mini 2*
• Outdoor 4*
• Wired Floodlight Camera*
• Video Doorbell*

*Early notification is turned on by default and cannot be turned off.

Turning early notification on/off

To turn early notification on or off:

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.

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 either Passive Infrared (PIR) or Pixel Difference Analysis (PDA). Your camera's Motion Sensitivity setting adjusts how much input it takes to send you a notification. Learn more about how Blink cameras detection motion.

Low sensitivity is less responsive, so a larger amount of heat or 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 Motion 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, since significantly loud feedback may occur. In this case, tap mute speaker in the upper right corner of the Live View.

Each camera has an individual sensitivity setting and you can find this in the Device Settings for each camera in your system.

Choosing High or Low Sensitivity

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

• High sensitivity (values of 6-9) means less motion over a shorter period of time will create a notification.
• Low sensitivity (values of 1-4) means more movement over a longer period of time will create a notification.

Note: Default sensitivity is normally a value of 5, except for Outdoor 4 cameras which have a default sensitivity of 6.

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.

In order to run the latest version of the Blink app, it's important your mobile device meets the minimum system requirements. You have the option to turn off automatic updates and update apps manually, or you can turn on automatic updates so that you don't need to manually update each app.

Manually update the Blink app

The Blink app can be manually updated and is always available for download in your app store.

• Learn more about how to manually update the Blink app on the Apple App Store.
• Learn more about how to manually update the Android Blink app on the Google Play Store.

Automatically update the Blink app

You also can set your apps to automatically update on your mobile devices.

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

How to update the operating system on 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 version.