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Arlo is a company that really requires no introduction. It’s been a long-standing player in the home security and smart home space. And is easily one of the more popular ones among competitors. That’s not without good reasons, since an Arlo camera packs all of the latest features from Night Vision to the ability to rotate the view and AI-driven person and package detection, complete with smart home integration.
Of course, another great feature with Arlo cameras is that they’re really ready to be mounted anywhere. And that includes upside down, mounted to the ceiling, a rafter, or some other location. Unfortunately, that also means that you’ll need to find the proper setting to ensure the footage saved isn’t also upside down. That is unless you want to go through the hassle of rotating footage you need after the fact using third-party software.
Arlo built a tool right into the software of its app to right the situation if you find yourself in it. As hinted already. But it isn’t necessarily as easy to find as might be hoped. And that’s what this guide seeks to explain.
As always, there may be some minor differences between what’s shown in the images below and what you find in your own app. Those will predominantly come down to differences in hardware and your own smart home environment, as with many of our guides. Namely, how many and which devices you have installed. Our sample images use an Arlo Essential Indoor Security Camera with a privacy shutter. But the menu itself should be identical or close enough to it as to make no difference.
So if you’re looking to learn how to rotate your Arlo camera view and footage 180-degrees for upside-down mounting, this guide can help.
How to rotate your Arlo camera footage 180-degrees
Of course, if you’re looking to rotate your Arlo camera 180-degrees, you’ll need to set it up first or have already set it up — and here’s our how-to guide for how to perform an initial setup. After that, the first step is going to be to open up the Arlo app on your device. Then log in. We’re using a fingerprint login in our sample images. But you may need to put in your password if you haven’t set that up yet.
On the main page, under the tab titled “Devices,” you’ll next need to find the camera that’s upside down. We only have one camera set up in our Arlo app, so it’s at the top. But you may need to scroll down the page if you have multiple Arlo devices in your smart home.
Once you find the appropriate camera, in our case “Cat Room,” select the three-horizontal-dot icon on its card. As shown below. Arlo will present you with a bottom-bar menu of options. Select “Device Settings” from that menu to continue.
In the Device Settings menu, the appropriate option should be near the bottom of the page. Scroll down to the “Video” subheader. Under that segment, you’ll see two options. Those are “Video Settings” and “Activity Zones.”
Select the option labeled “Video Settings.”
In Video Settings, you’ll be presented with options for adjusting brightness and Night Vision. You’ll also see an option to set the resolution of your camera if that’s supported by your hardware. As well as any additional options your camera might have on the video front. But the option we’re looking for is labeled “Rotate Image 180” degrees. That will have a toggle that’s turned off by default. Tap the toggle to turn it on.
You should see a message asking you to wait while the change is applied. Then the footage will be shown upside down in the preview. You can now use the back-arrow at the top left-hand side of the UI to back out of the menu. This is the final step of this how-to guide, so your Arlo app and camera will have automatically applied the change to rotate the view and footage by 180-degrees. It will automatically be saved with those settings as soon as the change is made.
To switch the option back — for example, if you move your camera again — simply follow this guide to find the toggle and tap it again to turn it off. You can also repeat the same steps for adjusting any other Arlo cameras you might have that need to be flipped.
