DECEMBER 14, 2017
Auto-Unlock: How It Works on August Smart Lock
Auto-Unlock is one of the most popular and unique features for August Smart Lock users. Having your door automatically unlock without having to reach for your phone or your keys as you approach your home is a magical experience. Like any simple and smart technology, there is a lot happening behind the scenes to make Auto-Unlock work just right.
How does Auto-Unlock Work?
Auto-Unlock relies on a few different technologies in your phone, not only the August app but also your Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and GPS. All of these are regulated by your operating system talking to the August app.
The August app has two states that determine how Auto-Unlock functions: Home and Away. When you’re at home, your August app will enter Home Mode and Auto-Unlock will not activate, it’s waiting for you to leave.
When the August app sees you have left your neighborhood or traveled more than 200 meters from your home, Auto-Unlock will go into Away Mode, until your return home again.
When you then return to within 200ft from your home, your phone will start looking for your lock. Once you’re close enough to your door (20-30 feet) and the August app sees your August Smart Lock, your door will Auto-Unlock and the app will go back into Home Mode.
More info on Auto-Unlock and tips on how to optimize it for success can be found here.
Updates to Auto-Unlock
Every time your OS is updated, such as with iOS 11 and Android Oreo, these updates change how your phone works with different apps. For these recent updates, it affected how the August app and Auto-Unlock interact with Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and location services. Over the last few weeks we’ve released new updates to our apps to improve your Auto-Unlock experience. If you haven’t been using Auto-Unlock, now is a great time to try it out. We’ve significantly improved the way Auto-Unlock works on Android and fine-tuned how it works on iOS.
In order to see all the improvements you will need to do the following depending on whether you’ve already been using Auto-Unlock or if you’re setting it up fresh.
- New Users: Update to the latest version of the Android or iOS app and enable Auto-Unlock in your Lock Settings.
- Current Users: If you currently have Auto-Unlock enabled, you will need to toggle it off and on again in your Lock Settings to see all of the latest improvements.
These new updates bring improvements across all OS versions from Android 5.0 Lollipop all the way to Android 8.1 Oreo.
iOS 11
As we mentioned, Auto-Unlock is complicated and the release of iOS 11 changed how the apps on your phone use Bluetooth, which is key (no pun intended) for Auto-Unlock. We release new app and feature updates to users regularly and we are currently working to optimize Auto-Unlock on iOS 11. Make sure to keep your phone up to date with the latest iOS and August app updates so you’ll automatically receive these updates as soon as we release them.
