Anker eufy

If you already own eufy hardware, this is the app to install, and for the most part it rewards you for choosing the brand. Video history stays on your own HomeBase or microSD card with no mandatory monthly fee, and cameras, robot vacuums, smart scales, baby monitors and pet feeders all sit behind one sign-in. The trade-offs are practical rather than dealbreaking: opening a motion clip can take several seconds while the app connects to and decrypts footage stored at home, Android alerts may arrive late until you change a battery setting, and the install is unusually heavy.

The app started as the control client for eufy Security’s battery-powered cameras and HomeBase hubs. Anker has since widened it into a dashboard for five product lines (eufy Security, eufy Clean, eufy Baby, eufy Life and eufy Pet). It has more than 10 million installs and over 213,000 ratings averaging 4.6, which suggests most owners are satisfied with it day to day, and its latest Google Play update arrived in April 2026. It is still a companion app first, though. Without eufy devices, it has little to offer.

What the app covers

Security is the core, and it’s where most of the app’s depth lives. The other four lines arrived later as Anker consolidated its smart-home range, and how much you can do with each depends on the specific device you own. Before buying a new eufy product with this app in mind, it’s worth confirming on the product page that the model is managed through it.

The payoff of consolidation is real for multi-device households. One account and one device list cover the front-door camera, the robot that cleans the kitchen and the scale in the bathroom. It’s the benefit owners praise most often.

How the security side works

The headline feature is local storage. Cameras record to a HomeBase hub, or to a microSD card in the camera on models that take one, and the footage is stored with AES encryption (128- or 256-bit). Because recordings live on hardware you own, the core features (live view, motion alerts, local recording and playback) work without a subscription. eufy does sell optional cloud plans for people who want off-site backup, but you don’t need one to see what happened on your porch yesterday.

Detection runs on the device rather than in the cloud. On supported models, on-device AI handles facial recognition, distinguishes people from general motion and filters out pets before a notification goes out. The aim is fewer false alerts reaching your phone, which matters more the more cameras you run.

Household sharing is built in. The primary account holder can send family invitations from the app’s settings, giving a partner or housemate shared control without handing over a login.

Beyond cameras: vacuums, scales, baby and pet

On the eufy Clean side, the app drives LiDAR-equipped robots such as the S1 Pro and X10 Pro Omni. It builds 3D maps, handles multi-floor layouts, lets you draw virtual no-go zones and sets suction and mopping strength room by room. Cleaning runs can be started, paused and monitored from anywhere over mobile data, as long as the robot itself is connected to your home Wi-Fi.

For eufy Life smart scales, body metrics sync to Google Fit and Fitbit on Android (and to Apple Health on iPhone), so readings can flow into the health app you already use. eufy Baby devices such as baby monitors and eufy Pet’s smart feeders are managed from the same device list. The wider integrations matter too: bridges to Matter, Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant let eufy devices sit inside an existing smart-home setup, and Siri Shortcuts covers iPhone households.

What owners report

Feedback divides along predictable lines. On the positive side, the most common theme is consolidation: owners with outdoor cameras, an indoor robot vacuum and a health scale like managing all of it from one interface instead of a folder full of apps. The second is money. Homeowners regularly point to the long-term savings of keeping footage on a HomeBase rather than paying a recurring cloud fee, and for a multi-camera setup that difference grows with every year the system is in use.

On the critical side, two complaints recur. The first is the wait when opening a motion alert: tap the notification, and it can take several seconds for the app to establish a secure connection to your home hardware and decrypt the clip. The second is late notifications on Android, where the phone’s battery optimization can hold motion alerts back until the screen is unlocked. For a security camera, a late alert is a meaningful problem, which is why we’d fix it on day one.

Where it frustrates

Clip latency is the cost of the local-storage design. A cloud-first system has typically uploaded the clip by the time you tap; eufy has to reach into your home, negotiate the connection and decrypt the stream in real time. A few seconds isn’t a failure, but it can feel slow next to cloud-first apps, and it’s most noticeable when you’re checking an alert in a hurry.

The notification issue has a documented fix. Open Android’s settings for the eufy app, set battery usage to “Unrestricted,” and confirm that all of the app’s notification channels are switched on. It’s a one-time change, but it lives in Android’s settings rather than the app’s, so it’s easy to miss.

Fine-grained notification control is harder to reach than we’d like. Per-device overrides (which camera alerts you, for what, and when) sit inside each device’s own sub-menus rather than in one central place, so tuning a multi-camera setup means a fair amount of tapping through nested screens.

Then there’s size. The install can exceed 500 MB, the price of bundling five product lines into one app. On an entry-level phone with limited storage that’s a significant share of the space, and the memory footprint can strain modest hardware.

The privacy record

Because privacy is central to eufy’s pitch, its track record is worth knowing. In late 2022, security researchers reported that some eufy cameras sent notification thumbnails to the cloud and that streams viewed through eufy’s web portal were not end-to-end encrypted, which conflicted with the brand’s local-storage marketing at the time. Anker acknowledged the issues in early 2023, said it had changed how web-portal streams are encrypted and updated its privacy wording.

The most useful way to think about the app today is as a hybrid edge-and-cloud design rather than a cloud-free one: recordings live on your hardware, while alerts and remote connections involve Anker’s servers. Local recording remains the core of the design, but it’s worth reviewing the app’s privacy and sharing settings, along with Anker’s current privacy statement, rather than assuming nothing ever leaves the house.

How it compares

Ring, Arlo and Google Nest generally need a paid plan for meaningful recorded-video history. In return, clips are already stored in the cloud, which usually makes them quicker to open from an alert. eufy reverses that trade: no required fee, but a short wait while footage streams from your own hardware. If fast playback matters more to you than avoiding a subscription, a cloud-first system may suit you better.

On the vacuum side, Roborock and iRobot each run their own apps with well-developed mapping tools. eufy’s clearest edge there is consolidation. If your cameras are already eufy, a eufy robot joins the same app instead of adding another one. The same logic applies to scales and pet feeders: on its own, none of these devices is a strong reason to choose this app, but together they make a single eufy household simpler to run.

Who it isn’t for

If you don’t own eufy hardware and aren’t planning to buy any, the app has little to offer on its own. If you need every alert to open instantly, the local-decryption delay will likely frustrate you more than a subscription would. And if your phone is low on storage or an entry-level model, the app’s size is a genuine consideration before you commit to the ecosystem.

The verdict

For eufy owners, the app does its central job well: it keeps your video on your own hardware without a mandatory fee, and it pulls cameras, vacuums, scales and more into one place. The drawbacks (clip latency, Android notification delays, buried notification settings and a heavy install) are real but mostly manageable once you know about them.

Set the app’s battery usage to Unrestricted on day one. Check that any new eufy device is supported before you buy it. And if privacy is why you chose eufy, spend a few minutes in the privacy settings so you know which features use the cloud.