Google has completed the transition of the Home and Nest community from a third-party forum platform to its own internal support infrastructure. This transition strips longtime members of their accumulated status.
The switch ends Google’s arrangement with the same external service that hosted the Stadia forums since it was discontinued, and puts smart home discussions under direct Google ownership for the first time in years, giving the community a restructured layout in the process.
Accounts created on the old platform will not be carried over to the alternative platform. Members who have built reputations through years of contributions will no longer have an automatic path to regaining their forum identities, as Google cited security and privacy considerations as the reason for its decision not to transfer login credentials.
This means that badges, rank designations, and community status levels accumulated on previous forums will be permanently lost, and affected users will have to register a new profile from scratch on the updated platform before participating in discussions.
In addition to account credentials, the permanent deletion date for old forum post archives is June 30, 2026, after which Google will permanently delete all content and account data not individually migrated or saved by individual users by that date.
The restructured community organizes discussions into 10 product-specific sections covering hardware categories such as cameras, doorbells, speakers, displays, and thermostats, with dedicated areas for Gemini for Home, apps and automation, account management, connectivity and security, and a space dedicated to smart home developers.
Google is positioning the integration as an effort to reduce off-topic noise and address the spam problem that third-party forum infrastructure has made more difficult to manage effectively, and the new structure will give the company direct control over content organization and user management for the first time.
Old forum content will be accessible until June 30, 2026, giving members a narrow window to capture guides, troubleshooting threads, and community discussions they’d like to preserve before Google permanently closes the archives.
