Using Vantage
Vantage puts your Ring cameras on one screen — as photographs that keep themselves current, or as live video when you want it, for one camera or all of them. You choose which cameras appear, in what order, and which part of each one is worth looking at.
It only watches. Nothing here moves a camera, changes its settings, or arms, disarms or unlocks anything — that stays in the Ring app. Vantage is a window, not a control panel.
Ways to use it Top bar On a camera Gestures Camera panel When pictures update Limits On a phone
Ways to use it
Leaving it up
The everyday case: every camera at once, on a screen you can glance at. Nothing streams unless asked, so an open window holds no sessions and costs no camera battery. Pictures keep themselves current, and when something moves, that camera's name flashes green as the new picture lands.
Looking at one thing closely
Double tap any camera to give it the whole screen, then pinch — or use the scroll wheel — to zoom into a corner of it. Zooming out goes past your crop, so you can check what the crop normally hides without disturbing it. While one camera is expanded, the camera panel becomes a way of switching which one is up there. Double tap again, or press Esc, to come back.
Watching something happen
Go Live on a single camera, or the top bar's Live to switch them all. Live is real video rather than photographs, and it stops itself after thirty minutes — see limits.
Setting it up the way you want
Open Cameras to choose which appear and drag them into the order you want. Crop a camera down to the part you actually care about — the end of a driveway, a doorway — and every view of it respects that from then on. All of it is remembered on that device.
The top bar
The first three are two-way switches: both options are shown and the one in force is lit.
| Live / Stills | Switches every camera at once. Stills are full-resolution photographs refreshed as Ring produces them; live is real video. Neither half is lit when some cameras are live and some are not. |
|---|---|
| Fit / Fill | Fit shows the whole picture, with bars where its shape does not match the tile. Fill crops it to cover the tile instead — drag the picture to choose which part shows. Hidden in list view, where every picture already fits. |
| Grid / List | Grid tiles the cameras and picks its own column count from their shapes. List gives each camera the full width of a tall screen and scrolls up and down; on a wide screen it gives each the full height instead and scrolls side to side. Which way it runs follows the shape of the window, so turning a phone turns the list with it. |
| Cameras | Opens the camera panel. Lit while it is open. |
| Fullscreen | Hides the browser's own chrome. Lit while active, and gone once Vantage is installed to a Home Screen, where there is nothing left to hide. |
On a camera
Tap or hover a camera to show its controls; tap again to hide them.
| Go Live / Stop | Streams this one camera. Live sessions stop on their own after thirty minutes — a countdown appears in the corner for the last five. |
|---|---|
| Listen / Mute | Turns on the live camera's audio. Tiles start muted so the grid can play on its own; only one camera is unmuted at a time, so two cannot talk over each other. A clone is the same camera, so it shares the soundtrack rather than opening another. Not shown on stills, which are silent. |
| Refresh | Wakes the camera briefly to capture a picture of right now, rather than waiting for Ring to produce one. Not shown while a camera is live, which is already current. |
| Crop | Drag across the picture to choose the part worth keeping, then Save. Reset restores the full frame and Cancel leaves it as it was. A crop follows its camera everywhere and is remembered. |
| Expand / Close | Gives one camera the whole screen. While it is expanded, the camera panel turns into a way of choosing which camera is up there — see the camera panel. Not shown when only one camera is selected, since there is nothing to expand away from. |
Gestures and keys
| Tap a camera | Shows its controls. Tap again to hide them. |
|---|---|
| Double tap Double click |
Expands that camera. Double tap an expanded camera to come back. |
| Pinch Scroll wheel |
Zooms an expanded camera, up to six times. A trackpad pinch works too. Zooming out goes past a crop: keep going and the parts the crop hides come back, all the way to the camera's whole picture. |
| Swipe or drag | Does one of two things, depending on whether the picture under your finger has anywhere to go. When there is more of it than fits — zoomed into an expanded camera, or in Fill — the swipe moves that picture. Otherwise it scrolls the list. In list view every picture is sized to fit exactly, so nothing is holding on to the swipe and it always scrolls. |
| Scroll wheel | Scrolls the list, whichever way that list happens to run — a downward wheel moves a sideways list along. Over an expanded camera the wheel zooms instead. |
| Esc | Closes an expanded camera, or cancels the crop editor. |
| Enter | Saves the crop being drawn. |
The camera panel
| Tap a row | Adds or removes that camera. Its place is kept either way, so one switched back on returns to where it was. |
|---|---|
| Drag the handle | Reorders the cameras. One order drives the grid, the list and the panel. Reset order appears once you have changed it. |
| While a camera is expanded |
The panel stops choosing what is in your grid and starts choosing what is on screen: tap any row and that camera takes over the full screen instead — no need to close and expand another. It works for cameras that are not even in your grid, and those are only borrowed. Closing returns you to exactly the grid you had, with nothing added to it. |
| Row labels | cropped marks a camera with a crop saved; live 12m shows how long a live session has left. |
When pictures update
A camera showing a picture from half an hour ago is almost always telling you something true: nothing has happened in front of it.
Ring produces a new still when it has a reason to, and movement is the main reason. When Ring reports motion, Vantage asks for a new picture at once and keeps asking until Ring has finished storing it — usually a second or two. So anything that moves in view lands on screen almost immediately, and the camera's name flashes green as it arrives.
Between those moments Vantage measures how often each camera is actually producing frames and asks at about that rate, quickening after movement and easing off — as far as once every few minutes — while a scene stays still. Asking more often than that would not help: the answer would be the same picture. An old timestamp means Ring has nothing newer, not that the viewer has stopped looking.
If you want to see this instant regardless, Refresh wakes the camera and takes one. The age under each camera counts up as you watch, so a picture going stale is visible without looking for it; past ten minutes it stops counting seconds.
Limits
| Live stops after thirty minutes |
Per camera, and then it returns to stills by itself. Ring does not report which cameras run on battery, so nothing can warn that a particular one is draining — the cap is what stops a forgotten window flattening a camera overnight. Start it again whenever you like. |
|---|---|
| Viewing only | No moving a camera, no siren, no two-way talk, no settings, no arming or disarming. Ring's API offers none of it to an app like this, and Vantage asks for none of it. |
| Ring's own markings | Ring burns a timestamp and a small label into the pictures it hands over. They cannot be turned off — but a crop can leave them outside the part you keep. |
| Settings stay on the device |
Your camera choice, order, crops, framing and layout live in the browser you set them in. Nothing syncs between devices — which also means each screen can be arranged to suit itself, and setting up a phone will not disturb the one on the wall. |
| Hidden means paused | A window in the background holds no streams and fetches nothing. It catches up when you return to it. |
On a phone or tablet
Add Vantage to your Home Screen and open it from there — it then runs without any browser chrome. In the browser's menu, choose Share, scroll down, then Add to Home Screen.
Grid or list is remembered separately for upright and sideways, so a phone can list in portrait and tile in landscape without being told twice. A tall screen starts in list, everything else in grid. Your camera choice, order, crops and framing are kept in the browser on each device, so each screen can be set up the way that suits it.