New app gets you to your camera feeds quicker
You install a video doorbell because you want to be able to see what’s going on, quickly. When an alert pops up “motion at front door” you want to see it, fast. That’s the premise behind Ring’s new Rapid Ring app.
A tacit admission that the main Ring app has gotten a little bloated – now that it’s almost a compete smart home system, with support for cameras, sensors, an alarm system, lights, locks and more – Rapid Ring is essentially a stripped down Live View for your camera feeds.
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The app launched in the UK and Australia a few weeks ago, and rolled out to the US late last month. A light version of the Ring app, Rapid Ring doesn’t replace the main app, but provides speedier access to your Live View, and helps you respond quicker to notifications.
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This should help tackle the common problem of getting a ring on your doorbell and then just seeing video of the back of someone’s head as they disappear, because it took too long to get to your feed in the app
Rapid Ring loses some of the features of the main app, for obvious reasons. You can’t zoom in or access any connected smart home features such as door locks (for that you need the main app).
Basically, it’s just designed for an “instant” view of your camera feed. You do get all the original communication features, however. But once you turn on notifications for a camera in Rapid Ring that automatically turns off notifications for that camera in the main app.
With the recent announcements around software upgrades to the Ring app, including Linked Devices and the upcoming Modes option for all cameras, the main app is becoming something of a behemoth, albeit a powerful one.
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Rapid Ring is an answer both to current Ring owners who have maybe been a bit frustrated with how quickly they can get to their feeds, and to future users who might not want all the other Ring features that load down the main app.
Ultimately, however, improving the main Ring app so this rapid feature is baked-in, rather than making users download two apps, would be a more elegant solution. In the meantime, it’s good to see Ring responding to one of its customers’ most common complaints.
