Four years since they said they are going to add landscape support? I think this story must be sitting on the very bottom of their ice box.
Heck, many of us are paying subscription fees for Wyze Plus, and while I understand that it goes towards real on-going costs to them (cloud storage, etc.), it seems like it ought to also cover making basic improvements to their app.
I’ve got over 10 cameras, so I often have a tablet sitting in landscape viewing 4 cameras at once from a group, as seen below, but I can’t find any way to go “back” to the main screen to pick a different camera group. I literally have to pick up the tablet and rotate it to portrait mode so that the little “<” button shows up.
Tapping the screen anywhere doesn’t cause it to show up. Tapping a stream will zoom in to that stream, which conveniently has a back button… but not the 4-up group view. Why?
let’s make a plea for that one back button on tomorrow April Fool Fix-It Friday thread once it get posted. they may need time to do a FULL landscape support, but they can at least fix that ONE thing…
Wyze… here’s how you monetize it… you make your existing customers happy, who then tell their friends. Do you know how many people look to geeks like me for advice? You do know that your products attract the geeks, right? I would LOVE to be able to tell people the following:
“Oh, if you want to dip your toes into using smart cameras, I’d recommend Wyze, hands down. Seriously, don’t bother with Eufy, or Arlo, or Nest, or any of the others… They may have caught on with the mainstream crowd, but I’m telling you, Wyze knows what’s up! They make a bunch of different cameras at reasonable prices, and you don’t even need a subscription. There are basic cloud features that you get for nothing, and you can throw in an old microSD card to have it capture 24/hours a day, so you can review continuous footage in case there’s an event. That’s all without a subscription! Oh, and they’re based on Seattle, WA, so it’s not like some knock-off company overseas who may be doing who knows what with your camera feeds… I’m telling you, grab a Wyze camera and see what it’s like. You may even find that their subscription plans are totally worth it – I am the cheapest person you know, and even I finally decided it was well worth it, at least for some of my cameras. Seriously, these folks are making the RIGHT product. Oh, and their app? It’s great on all the mobile platforms, and it has all the basic features you’d expect. Not only can you live stream your camera in full screen, if you get multiple cameras, you can stream multiple feeds at once, and of course it works in landscape mode or portrait mode. They’ve also got a light mode and a dark mode now, and they even have an option to dim the brightness of each camera feed independently when in dark mode. They always seem to be innovating not only with crazy stuff like a remote controlled car with a camera on it, but also just in terms of making their software better!”
Come on guys… you can do this, and I promise you it will be a huge win. Make it happen! It’s your opportunity to lose.
Sorry, but having to cajole businesses into providing things that are not really anything special is getting old. I also think quite well of Wyze overall, but this is just plain disappointing in an underlying manner.
Hi All,
Upgraded from Samsung S7 FE to an S8 Ultra tablet. Now Wyze App crashes immediately when trying to view a camera when in Landscape mode, where on the S7 FE it would at least work for that.
Now when in Portrait mode with the S8 Ultra tablet I can view the camera but when I click upper right corner to expand the view the App crashes. This did not happen on the S7 FE tablet.
Quick screen recording of what happens. Slowed down the actual crashing part to see it better.
Part 1: Wyze App immediately crashing when attempting to view a camera if tablet is in Horizontal/Landscape mode.
Part 2: Wyze App crashing when displaying a camera in Portrait mode and clicking to expand view which should fill screen allowing you to rotate tablet to see large image.
Tablet: Samsung S8 Ultra
Android Version: 12
One UI Version: 4.1
On my Samsung Tablet I frequently look at groups of cameras in the landscape orientation. I typically mount the tablet in landscape and view groups of cameras.
Pressing the ‘back’ navigation button causes the view to switch back to portrait rather than going back to the camera/group select view. It then automatically switches back to landscape, making the back button worthless. i.e., if I press it slowly, it goes in circles.
I want pressing ‘back’ to go up one menu (to select a different group) without any need to change my tablet’s orientation to portrait first; seems like this should be the expected behavior.
Weird. On my Samsung tablet if in landscape position a group view doesn’t work at all. It just blinks one cam up in a compressed view for a second then crashes back to the cam/group selection screen, but i don’t need to rotate the tablet. (See my video above as it works the same for v3 cams)
Also either i missed this before or some update changed it:
When i click on a v2 cam it will show a correct full screen landscape image and the back button will take it back to the selection screen but not smoothly, more of a crash back. When i click on a v3 cam (and a group v2, v3 or mixed group) it will show the quick compressed image then crash back to the cam/group selection screen.
I have 27 Wyze cams so it is a bit depressing to not be able to have this work correctly.
I wonder what exciting new unneeded product they will be coming out with next?
It’s not Wyze… Samsung keeps playing with the mechanics of display settings in One UI on top of Android. See if you can access the following: Android settings > Advanced features > Labs > Show apps in landscape > Wyze > select “App default”
Well i’ll be darned. Selecting “app default” still had the select cam screen coming up sideways but selecting “full screen” makes everything work correctly.
I’ll have to test this on my S7 FE tablet as well.
Only one thing i’m not sure of is groups. They work in landscape but i have to scroll down to see them instead of being 4 on a screen. Is this normal? I haven’t really used groups much so don’t remember.
Thanks so much for sharing this i appreciate it.
John
I have 6 Samsung tablets all running different versions of Samsung’s One UI. All are working well displaying 4-cam groups in landscape orientation with the UI set to “App default”, but none are running One UI 4.1 so you may have different results.
The biggest problem is that the next Samsung OTA may change what we’re doing here… again.
More testing:
If i bring up Wyse app with tablet in portrait position clicking on a group then rotating the tablet into landscape position will display the group with 4 cams on the screen. Sometimes it takes 2 rotations to get it to work. Of course “back button” does not work as the OP mentioned.
I just leave my orientation set to Auto with tablet physically in landscape (on its side), start the Wyze app (home page displayed sideways-portrait), tap a group. It briefly displays a column of cam streams in portrait and switches to proper landscape 4-cam view.
To get back to the home screen in landscape, swipe up or down from the edge (outside the group view) so the Android buttons display, tap the back button and then quickly tap the back button again. 2nd back button is displayed in sideways-portrait view so you need to anticipate where the 2nd button push will be located. Annoying… yes. But a stopgap until Wyze properly implements landscape view for tablets.
I used to be able to use groups of camera’s in landscape on my galaxy tab 7+ but now it starts to load a squished and then boots out to the list. I wish this would get fixed. Groups would be a great way to see multiple camera’s in one view on a tablet.
