How to Fix Your Nest Thermostat When it Won’t Respond

If you purchased the Nest Thermostat you may have read about the recent problems and may be living in fear of the dreaded technology glitch that is causing many Nest users to lose heat in the dead of winter. 

But fear no more! 

Nest Support has published an informative page with the very convenient title “What to do if your Nest Thermostat has become slow, unresponsive, or won’t turn on.” Yes, that’s really the title. 

For additional information, see Nest Support page. For a more basic overview, keep on reading: 

Nest Thermostats that were updated recently to software version 5.1.3 or later may have some issues, including becoming unresponsive, not effectively charging the battery, or going down completely. Nest recommends recharging and restarting your thermostat to fix the glitch and get it up and working again. 

Indications of this glitch include the following: 

• The thermostat being offline in the Nest’s mobile app and disconnected from the Wi-Fi 

• The thermostat tells you the battery is low and it needs to turn off 
• The thermostat’s animations are slower than usual 
• The thermostat shows a notification that says, “Please remove the thermostat from its base, then reattach it;” 
• The thermostat’s display won’t light up and unresponsive (you may also see a blinking red or green light above the display) 
• The thermostat can’t control the corresponding heating and cooling unit(s) 

If your Nest Thermostat is on but you can’t control it or it’s slow, try manually restarting it beginning with turning the thermostat off and then back on again. If your Nest Thermostat is off and won’t turn on, take the thermostat off the base and charge it using a a USB charger plugged into the wall or a computer. 

PLEASE READ: Do not try to power on or off your thermostat while it’s still connected to a computer for charging. (They didn’t go into detail why, but if Nest says don’t do it, DON’T.) 

After around 10 minutes of charging, detach the Nest Thermostat from the USB cable. If the component has turned on while plugged in, shut it down and then turn it back on again, manually restarting the thermostat. Once it has restarted completely, plug it back in to reach full charge. After an hour of charging, unplug the Nest Thermostat and reattach it to its base. 

You should be ready to rock at this point, but  if you’re done with Nest and want to swap your thermostat, you can read our comparison of common thermostats.  

If you have attempted both of these processes and the Nest Thermostat is still showing signs of problems, you will need to bring in some experts. Enter us! If Service Experts Heating, Air Conditioning & Plumbing installed your Nest Thermostat, please feel free to call us at 866-397-3787 or schedule an appointment online. 

And if you have another problem, like a warning from Nest that your furnace is shutting down, then your thermostat could be functioning as it’s meant to. You may need to call Service Experts Heating, Air Conditioning & Plumbing as one of the U.S.‘s premier furnace experts to fix your unit.  

Finally, do not let this situation concern you about your Nest’s reliability. By owning and properly using Nest, your thermostat is actually saving money for you daily. When set it up properly, Nest intelligently learns your lifestyle, then adjusts your heating and cooling use to optimize energy savings constantly, which typically results in payback within the first year. And, Nest is still one of the only thermostats under $300 on the market that does this. So don’t let one problem get you down. You were smart to invest in a Nest, because a smart thermostat is still one of the leading investments in your home that you can make.