Getting Too Many Alerts From Unifi Protect? Here's How to Fix It
While Unifi Protect is a powerful security camera system, receiving a constant barrage of notifications can quickly become overwhelming. This "alert fatigue" can cause you to ignore or mute notifications, defeating the purpose of the system. If your phone is buzzing non-stop, it's time to fine-tune your settings.
The key to reducing unwanted alerts is to move from generic motion detection to specific, meaningful event detection. This guide will show you how to use motion zones, sensitivity adjustments, and Smart Detections to get only the alerts that matter.
## Step 1: Utilise Smart Detections (The Most Important Step)
This is the single most effective way to reduce unwanted alerts. Instead of notifying you for any motion (a swaying tree, a cat, a shadow), Smart Detections use AI to identify specific objects.
- Enable Smart Detections: In the Unifi Protect mobile app or web interface, select a camera. Go to its settings and find the "Smart Detections" or "Detections" menu.
- Choose What to Detect: Enable detection for "People" and "Vehicles".
- Crucial - Adjust Your Notifications: Now, go to the notification settings for that camera. Change your motion alerts to trigger ONLY on Smart Detections. Disable notifications for generic "Motion".
By doing this, you've just told the system to ignore all the random environmental motion and only alert you when it specifically identifies a person or a vehicle. For many users, this step alone will solve 90% of the "too many alerts" problem.
## Step 2: Precisely Define Your Motion and Detection Zones
Even with Smart Detections, you need to tell the camera where to look. You don't want to be alerted every time a person walks down the public footpath in front of your house.
- Open Zone Editor: In the camera's settings, find the "Activity Zones" or "Motion Zones" editor.
- Create Inclusion Zones: Draw zones only over the areas you own and want to monitor, such as your driveway, your garden path, or the area directly in front of your door.
- Create Exclusion Zones: This is just as important. If a public road or footpath is in the camera's view, draw an exclusion zone over it. This tells the camera to completely ignore any and all activity in that specific area. Be precise. Exclude tree branches that are prone to moving in the wind.
## Step 3: Adjust Sensitivity and Cooldown Times
If you are still getting too many alerts after setting up Smart Detections and zones, you can further refine the settings.
Adjust Motion Sensitivity
- In the camera's motion settings, you will find a sensitivity slider. A setting of 100% means even the smallest pixel change will trigger an event.
- Lower this sensitivity. Start by reducing it to 70 or 80. This will require more significant movement to create an event, helping to filter out things like rain or insects.
Set a Notification Cooldown
- To prevent being spammed by a single event (like someone working in the garden), you can set a cooldown period.
- In the main Unifi Protect notification settings, look for an option like "Time Between Notifications". Setting this to one minute, for example, means that after a camera sends you an alert, it will wait at least one minute before sending another one from that same camera.
By combining the power of AI-based Smart Detections with carefully drawn zones and sensible sensitivity levels, you can transform your Unifi Protect system from a constant source of noise into a smart, efficient security tool that only alerts you when it's truly necessary.