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Arlo is well known as one of the best smart home camera makers around so it might be odd to stumble across a guide showing how to reboot or remove one of the company’s products from your smart home. But, of course, there are a number of reasons why you might want to reset, reboot, or remove a camera from your Arlo account and home ecosystem.
For instance, if you’re upgrading to new cameras or if you need to reset the camera to stop them from malfunctioning. Although rare, that’s always a possibility. And no company has a perfect track record when it comes to quality control.
Conversely, you’ll also want to remove it from your Arlo home if you plan on selling the camera.
Now, the method laid out here will also remove the Arlo camera or cameras from other apps and accounts beyond the Arlo app for smart home devices. Namely, any accounts, apps, or smart home ecosystems you’ve added them to. Such as Google Home. So it may also be useful for that. Since there’s no way to remove individual cameras from linked systems without removing the entire account and all associated devices.
More succinctly, if you’re looking to remove just one device from a Google Home account or somewhere else, this will be the best course of action to take on that front too. Removing them directly from Google Home or elsewhere will remove the entire array of cameras and devices you have installed.
Having said that, it is a fairly straightforward process. Although it does require a bit of navigating via the app. So it won’t necessarily be the most intuitive process. But it certainly isn’t difficult, once you know where to look.
Here’s how to reboot an Arlo camera if it’s having issues …or remove it from your account and associated apps or smart home
As noted above, performing a reboot or going through the process to remove and then factory reset your Arlo camera can have several benefits. For instance, if your Arlo camera is acting up and performing poorly — if there are some other issues going on — a reboot can fix those. And, if that fails, a complete reset should do the trick. And fortunately, Arlo cameras are incredibly easy to set up, to begin with.
This guide begins, as many of our guides do, with the opening of an app. In this case, you’ll need to first open and then log into the Arlo app. As shown below, we’ve logged in with a fingerprint.
Next, you’ll need to select the appropriate camera from your list on the home page. Namely, the “Devices” page. In our sample images, we only have one camera set up. The Arlo Essential Indoor Security Camera with a privacy shutter. So we didn’t need to scroll to find ours. Scroll as needed to discover the camera you’d like to remove or reboot.
Select the three-dot Settings icon from the camera’s card. Then select the “Device Settings” option that appears at the bottom of that page’s UI.
Scroll to the bottom of the resulting “Device Settings” page and select “Restart” to effectively shut down and reboot the camera. This will clear any processes the camera may be working on and start it up fresh.
If an initial reboot doesn’t work via the in-app restart button for your Arlo camera, you may need to remove it and set it up again. Especially if it’s a wireless camera and the problem doesn’t fix itself. Or if the app doesn’t start working when you try to restart it.
Conversely, it may be best to simply unplug the camera, if it’s a wired camera. If you need to reset it completely to factory settings, you’ll need to follow the remaining steps here. To reset a wireless Arlo camera with the hardware, you’ll need to hold down the reset button for 10 seconds.
The option to remove the device, effectively resetting it so that you can factory reset it and return it to factory settings, is just below. Specifically, the option is labeled “Remove Device.”
The Arlo app will ask you to confirm your choice and, depending on your camera, there may be other on-screen steps to follow.
Once you’ve gone through the steps to remove the camera from your Arlo app, if a restart didn’t work, you’ll need to reset the hardware itself. Or if removing the camera and adding it back didn’t work. Locate the reset button on your Arlo camera and hold that down for 12 seconds. You’ll see the LED indicator blinking in an amber color when the process has started. Then you can release the button. The camera will reset itself back to factory settings.