Sometimes, you may want to access old footage from your Ring video doorbell – here’s where you can have all your questions answered. Knowing how far back your doorbell history goes depends on your region.
Some plans last 60 days (e.g. North America) whilst others last 30 days (e.g. Europe) through the Ring Protect Plan.
In this article, we will discuss how far you can view old footage from your Ring doorbell and how fast you would need to act before this data gets deleted permanently from the Ring cloud servers.
How Far Back Does a Ring Doorbell History Go?
The amount of time on how far back you can view old footage on your Ring doorbell will depend on your location and subscription plan.
In the US, Ring allows users a subscription plan that allows you to access your footage captured in the past 60 days, yet when it comes to Europe, you only have 30 days.
This doesn’t take away from any other storage devices you plan to use to store old data, whether it be an SD Card or another type of external plug-ins.
How to Store Archived Footage from Your Ring Doorbell
If you're worried about archiving your data or acquiring a specific piece of footage necessary for a police report – don't worry – as Ring allows you to download your footage whenever it’s necessary.
Here are several things you need to download footage:
Laptop or PC: Depending on your requirements, whether it's archiving your entire doorbell camera footage or acquiring a few key pieces, you will always need a computer.
Therefore, if you want to archive your entire footage, we recommend you use a PC or a desktop computer, and install several hard drives on it.
Smartphone/Tablet: You can also download videos to your smartphone or tablet, but we recommend that you do not download batches of content. Unlike a laptop or PC, it's arduous to navigate the file system from an iPhone/Android phone.
Ring Protect Plan: Without the Ring Protect Plan subscription, your footage will not be saved on the cloud servers, and you will have no way to access any footage because it won’t be uploaded to Ring’s server.
Also, make sure not to forget about renewing your subscription plan. As soon as your subscription ends, the content gets deleted from the cloud.
How to Check the History on Your Ring Doorbell
Without the Ring Protect Plan, you can only view the camera feed in real-time and previous timelines will not be recorded.
There are two ways to view your event history: the recent Timeline feature or the classic Event History feature. We'll run through both of these in the following guide.
- First, open the Ring app.
- On the homepage (the first window you see when you open the app), you will see a screenshot of your devices' camera feeds. Tap on the corresponding device's live feed.
- After that, tap on the video feed at the top, and it will show you the live feed.
- From here, you can scrub back and forth to change timelines and see what has happened during each time.
- You can also tap the Today option, and a menu will pop up where you can select a different date and start scrubbing through the footage recorded on that day.
- If you want to use the classic Event History mode, go back to the homepage and tap on the menu icon in the upper left corner of the screen.
- Then, tap on Devices.
- Choose your corresponding device from the list.
- The device's dashboard will show up.
- From the dashboard, select Event History.
Managing the History on Your Ring Doorbell
You may want to access your Ring doorbell camera footage very frequently depending on your circumstances. If so, knowing how to manage your Ring doorbell's event history is an absolute necessity.
First of all, one thing you should never mismanage is your Ring Protect Plan subscription. There are three tiers, with all of them providing the same 60 days of recent footage (30 days for the EU/UK).
Maintaining the subscription: Whatever subscription plan you choose, we advise that you never miss out on a subscription because the moment your subscription ends, your content gets deleted from the cloud servers immediately.
Adjusting storage times: You do have the option to configure for how long you want to keep your content alive on the servers. With the maximum being 60 days, you can set it to a shorter timespan such as 14, 7, or even a single day. However, we recommend that you keep this setting at its default.
Maintaining a stable internet connection: The Ring Protect Plan subscription is only half of the equation and the other half is a reliable internet connection with a considerable amount of data. We recommend a high-speed internet connection (at least 2 Mbps per device) with unlimited data or 50 GB to 300 GB of data per month.
What to Do If Your History Is Not Working
Sometimes, your Ring doorbell may not work properly, and you won't be able to access the Event History feature or respond to somebody at your front door.
The following section lists several things you can do to get the Event History feature working properly again.
Cannot access any event: You might be facing an error where you can react to live events but cannot access saved events by scrubbing the timeline or heading over to Event History.
When this happens, there are several reasons why:
- Your subscription plan might have ended.
- You might not be a primary account user that's linked to this device.
- You might be using third-party apps (such as Amazon Alexa) that interfere with the Ring app.
The Ring website is working but the Ring app is not working:
- Check your Wi-Fi network to see if it’s connected to the internet.
- Use your laptop or PC to access your Ring device via the website.
- Close the app on your smartphone or restart your smartphone and try again.
- Update or reset the Ring app – you will have to reconnect to all of your Ring devices.
Common Questions Relating to Ring Doorbell
For users in the US, they can access recordings from the past 60 days. Unfortunately, users in the EU/UK can only access the last 30 days of recordings.
No, it only starts recording when the motion sensor detects any movement. However, you can subscribe to the Ring Protect Plan Pro, which includes 24/7 professional monitoring for the Ring Alarm bundle.
Yes, you can. However, you will not have access to any video footage history. You will only be able to open up the live feed and use the device as a standard video doorbell.
Although it is not recommended, specific models have a small amount of local storage for saving files before uploading them to the cloud. It is not enough to store a large number of videos, and you cannot access these files without Wi-Fi.
Ideally, you want to dedicate 2 Mbps of bandwidth to each Ring device with an internet package that provides unlimited data or 50 GB to 300 GB of data for uploading footage to the cloud.
The Verdict
The cloud servers provided by Ring are an essential feature for anyone who may be security conscious. The Ring Protect Plan offers that with footage provided within the last 30 to 60 days.
There are some slight drawbacks as any older footage is automatically deleted and the Ring Protect Plan is available only through subscription. We recommend that you opt for at least the Basic Protect Plan which lets you access previous footage and download them for later use.
It is important to know how far back a Ring doorbell history goes to stay on top of any security concerns.