# Onelink Home by First Alert — user reviews > 140 indexed App Store user reviews of Onelink Home by First Alert by First Alert / BRK Brands, rated 1.50/5 from 295 ratings. - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/onelink-home-by-first-alert/id1034376317/reviews - App overview in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/onelink-home-by-first-alert/id1034376317.md - Rating breakdown: 5★ 19 · 4★ 8 · 3★ 11 · 2★ 19 · 1★ 238 ## What do users think of Onelink Home by First Alert? Overall sentiment: negative **Pros** - 👍 Easy setup - 🚀 Smooth installation process - 🔒 Seamless HomeKit integration **Cons** - 🐛 Buggy app with frequent crashes - 🤖 Poor Alexa/Google Home integration - 🔌 Connectivity issues with WiFi and Bluetooth - 🔇 Unreliable notifications and alarm silencing - 🕰️ Slow response times during emergencies **Commonly reported bugs** - App fails to recognize existing accounts - Devices disappear from app and HomeKit - Alarms going off for no reason - Inability to silence alarms remotely **Most requested features** - Ability to disable Alexa/Google Home integration - Improved firmware update process - More customization options for nightlight and alarm settings - Better app performance and stability ## Newest reviews (20 of 140) ### 1/5 — Connect smoke/CO2 alarm *2025-01-19, version 1.84.6* Spent half a day trying to connect my new smoke alarm. Made sure my wi-Fi was set to 2.4 but that doesn’t help. Deleted the settings, delete the app multiple times. Rebooted my phone multiple times. Nothing worked. I will use this detector without the app. I don’t have the patience to spend so many hours trying to connect to this app. ### 1/5 — Can’t connect, Won’t stop yapping *2025-01-15, version 1.84.6* Bought a house with a OneLink smoke detector installed and it’s a piece of junk. It won’t connect to the wifi even after a factory reset. Instead it keeps loudly announcing that it can’t connect to the wifi, waking up my daughter. And customer service has been non-responsive. ### 1/5 — Just awful *2024-09-02, version 1.84.6* Constant false alarms from the devices themselves. The silence alarm function in the app has never worked. Not once. Most times, the app does not even show that the alarm is going off at all. ### 1/5 — Buggy & Missing Key Features *2024-04-24* The fresh start process is terrible sometimes takes multiple resets of each detector to add them. False alarms from days ago still show up in the app with no way to remove them. Sometimes my lighting selections do not apply to the detector in the whole system can be rather buggy. I should be able to see easily at a glance if all of my detectors have the latest firmware update and there should be a button to check for updates. I should also be able to rearrange the order of the detectors in the app. When are new features going to be added? And when are the existing features going to be further improved? ### 1/5 — Works fine *2024-04-04, version 1.84.6* I took my time, knowing some people had trouble setting it up. I followed the instructions to the letter. And everything works as expected. Five stars for providing a French language UI both in the app and with the device's voice prompts. Five stars for HomeKit seamless integration. Four stars for the inability (or complexity) to have two iOS devices running the app for the same Unit. Three stars for the inability to shut off false alarms (not that I've gotten any so far) through HomeKit. Edit a year later... Got a false alarm in the middle of the night. Couldn't shut it off via HomeKit. I had to press the button with a stick, like in the good old days. This morning the app indicated that the devices required configuration. Although I managed to connect them to HomeKit after having reset them. It is IMPOSSIBLE to set them up in the app. The pairing with the 2.4Ghz network will not work through the app. So configuration remains partial... And when you try the app configuration (as required), it breaks the HomeKit connection !!! It's hard to believe that a multi million dollar company cannot pay 50000$ to a developper to fix this. For me this company doesn't care at all for its reputation. And it is the last time I buy one of their products. And I will let everyone I know not to buy their products. This as been going for years, as per the reviews. This is unacceptable. FIX THIS APP ! ### 1/5 — Outdated *2024-02-06, version 1.84.6* What good is a system that no longer operates correctly because your units are No longer supported by the app. I still have 4 yrs left on my smoke/carbon monoxide detectors but can not be managed or monitored because of the app. I think first alert should be responsible for costs that I will incur to replace their units with units that actually work with their app. ### 1/5 — Charges $16.79 without notice *2023-12-26, version 1.84.6* BRK support page instructed me to get the Onelink Home app to test the battery on my smoke alarm. App did not work and also charged me $16.79 without notifying me. After calling tech support I was told the app isn’t needed. Very conflicting information on BRK support page. ### 1/5 — Absolute trash. Software and Hardware. *2023-11-07, version 1.84.4* I’ve used this app and alarms for a little over a year. A quick Google search or a scroll through Amazon reviews will confirm just how bad this app and its related hardware is. One of these smoke alarms triggering a false alarm in the middle of the night is bad. Doing it two nights in a row is worse. Getting absolutely zero feedback in the app that anything is wrong is terrible. Nothing even in the logs after the fact. The app always reports a rosy “Everything is OK”. No. No, it’s not. As far as I can tell these smoke alarms are just night lights and the app only exists to change their brightness. I have zero confidence now that they will do their job and the app will ever notice. Trash. Trash. Trash. Go set your money on fire. Same result. ### 1/5 — Pitiful *2023-10-28, version 1.84.4* I placed my homes safety in this company and wished I hadn’t. I have 2 units linked and they are in HomeKit. I had them go off a couple times now as a result of pizzas dripping cheese in the oven. Problem is, an alert never pops up from the app or HomeKit. Also in the history neither one shows they have ever gone off. Don’t ignore all these 1 star reviews. They don’t work as advertised. ### 1/5 — A Dangerous Joke: Onelink’s Unforgivable Failures *2023-10-26, version 1.84.4* In April 2023, I placed my trust in the Onelink First Alert Detector. What I received were nights of sheer terror. At 4 am, the device let out a jarring false alarm. As if that wasn’t enough, it struck again at 4:31 am one month later. This device had the audacity to display an “end of life” alert in just 6 months, a far cry from the promised 5-year lifespan. On the HomeKit subreddit, I discovered a plethora of users with similar harrowing tales. To make matters worse, customer support casually mentioned the product’s quiet discontinuation, suggesting a laughably inferior non-smart replacement. This product is a complete betrayal, turning what should be nights of rest into dread-filled ordeals. Future buyers, heed this warning for your peace and safety. ### 1/5 — Do NOT buy these alarms *2023-10-05, version 1.84.4* We have had multiple problems with many false alarms. The app is rarely updated and the alarms are crap. DO NOT buy these or use this app! We are going back to Nest Protect and getting a Starling hub to connect them to HomeKit. In eight years with Nest Protect we NEVER had any issues. A little over a year with FirstAlert and we have recently dealt with so many false alarms…including in the middle of the night! DONE with this horrible product. ### 1/5 — Doesn’t work *2023-10-01, version 1.84.4* Doesn’t support their own products. Totally broken abandonware. Don’t buy their products. ### 1/5 — Bad, out of date, feels unsafe *2023-09-30, version 1.84.4* I bought NINE of these smoke detectors, before reading any of the reviews on the app. I figured, as long as I got something HomeKit native, it didn’t really matter how bad the app was. Now, almost a year later I have a rock in my gut about this whole thing. Last week my wife’s asked what the alarm that had gone off was all about. I said I didn’t know what she was talking about. Then she let me know that the smoke alarm in one of our children’s bedrooms went off, but she didn’t hear what the voice said from wherever she was in the house. I never got a notification from HomeKit, or the native app. There’s no information about an alarm having gone off in any of the histories. Now I realize this is painfully common from reading other reviews. I’ve set up a ton of connected home gear in my day, and I can say with certainty that the app isn’t the absolute worst I’ve ever experienced, but it’s pretty bad and quite buggy. I’ve always felt that it’s inexcusable that you can’t turn the nightlight off completely. You might think that turning it all the way down to one percent is good enough, but I assure you; when you’re trying to get a newborn to sleep, every photon matters. The HomeKit integration seems to be basically useless. it’s not giving me alerts when alarms go off. from what I’ve come to understand now, even if it does, silencing the alarm remotely is horrifically slow. if I had to guess, something about the design of these detectors requires reaching all the way out to the Internet and back, which seems fundamentally against HomeKit principles. But even upon launching the native app, the splash green tells you that it’s downloading devices from the cloud. Those devices should be stored within the app, and remembered - that’s a really basic thing. All of this is to say that I will be testing these alarms to see if they actually go off due to smoke the next time my kids are out of the house so that I can sleep at night. Even if the app gets updated tomorrow fixing all of the complaints in everyone’s reviews, I don’t know that I will ever trust or recommend first alert ever again. ### 1/5 — Expensive dangerous piece of junk *2023-09-23, version 1.84.4* OneLink detectors with HomeKit are expensive, useless garbage. I’ve had one for three years. It was a pain in the bum to set up. It’s gone off four times, every time a false alarm with no smoke or fire of any kind. What has been a more regular occurrence is when the device mysteriously goes into setup mode. There’s no notice of any kind. Nothing pushed from the OneLink app, nothing in HomeKit, no device lights or chirping. The only way we find out is randomly opening the OneLink app and the detector is yellow and says it needs setting up. That usually requires a total factory reset of the device. When it does go off, there’s no notification in HomeKit, nothing from the OL app. Just the ear splitting alarm that can only be silenced by climbing up to it and holding down the center button. There’s a silence button in the app but it takes so long to connect to the device and then you have to apparently hold the button down- it takes five times longer than just using the hardware button. It provides almost no HomeKit integration. You can’t ask Siri to silence or test the alarm. You can’t ask Siri if the device is working. You can only ask if the device detects smoke. It won’t even tell you if it detects carbon monoxide using the EXACT SAME SENTENCE STRUCTURE. Even the room configurations are stupid. You can select “study” as the location for the detector but you can’t have it announce “study” if there’s an alarm. The only similar option is…. “Office”? Ludicrously expensive piece of junk. ### 1/5 — Dysfunctional app and product *2023-09-22, version 1.84.4* Very disappointed about the OneLink product & app. Had 2 false alarms getting you out of bed and whilst you try to pull it off via the app it’s not working immediately. Provided customer service with report but still no response after days. They claim you get a response after 1 business day… Poor customer experience and product…. ### 1/5 — Completely useless *2023-08-29, version 1.84.4* These detectors and app are useless. The detectors have only ever gone off for false alarms. When there is a false alarm, they don’t send a push notification from the app. I have to open the app and manually reload it for it to recognize one of the detectors is going off. So that provides no value for alerting me of a problem if I were away from the house. Total garbage. ### 1/5 — Stay away *2023-08-12, version 1.84.4* The alarm started going off for no reason after about a year being installed. No fire, no smoke, no CO. Did not properly alert me on my phone while it was happening. Could not silence it though the app, I could only silence it momentarily on the hardware. Ended up having to deactivate it, only to be woken up again the next night by the (now deactivated) device telling me it’s battery was low. Had to take the whole thing apart with a screwdriver at 2am to get it to stop. ### 1/5 — Resideo products stay away! *2023-08-08, version 1.84.4* Like others have said, there are several problems with these products and tech-support is nonexistent. I am not receiving notifications for this life safety system. I wish there was a class action. And sometimes there are false alarms. Too frustrated to articulate my anger and frustration right now. ### 2/5 — Can’t add smoke detector *2023-06-10, version 1.84.4* The app has no + button to add a smoke alarm to the app ### 1/5 — Zero stars *2023-05-29, version 1.84.4* Unsafe. Unusable. Garbage. All I can say is these don’t work. The app doesn’t work. HomeKit doesn’t work. The 9 alarms I have randomly go off now due to a software update. I cannot shut alarm off. No history or notification saying which one is triggering it. First alert is no help. They don’t apparently think it’s serious enough. They are only fire alarms that are meant for safety. This company sells a non functioning product, with a non functioning app, with no service or intention of ever making it work properly. Apple should not allow the app on the AppStore. It is unsafe. ## Most critical reviews (10 lowest-rated) ### 1/5 — Don’t buy from that company *2026-04-20, version 1.84.6* I bought some smoke detectors in 2022 and wanted to use the wireless system. I paid a lot of money, and now I find out that the device has been discontinued—and to make matters worse, they’ve stopped updating the app that connects it, so it’s completely useless now. Wow ### 1/5 — Abandoned Products *2026-01-28, version 1.84.6* This company leaves you on a lurch with its now abandoned WiFi smoke/CO2/Airplay 2/HomeKit alarm devices after spending premium money for them, they offer no support. Thieves. ### 1/5 — Miserable *2026-01-03, version 1.84.6* Just when you think you got this thing set up and it looks really good it doesn't work. All you wanted was to know that the smoke detector was functional in Apple home and that's gotta be something they could've fixed ### 1/5 — Good device, awful pairing experience *2025-12-17, version 1.84.6* Trying to get this to pair has been an awful experience. Retrying many times, about to find a different brand. ### 1/5 — No longer supported *2025-12-14, version 1.84.6* This app is older then the Alarm and has not been updated for over two years. It will not pair with SC5 and is a poor replacement for the Google Neat Protect. Returning them all to the store. Horrible support. ### 1/5 — Broken *2025-10-27, version 1.84.6* Slow and buggy. Notifications are not sent. App hasn’t been updated in more than a year. ### 1/5 — Good luck to those who use this brand/App *2025-10-20, version 1.84.6* It’s bad enough that the products always gave me some type of headache with connection complications or something going wrong. Trust me I understand that software building and getting things to play nice are not always easy and definitely takes time to improve and expand one but to know that I’ve paid money in this product and now the main product I use for it was discontinued and that’s why it’s not connecting absolutely pisses me off. Lesson learned shop elsewhere ### 1/5 — Ugh *2025-08-27, version 1.84.6* In one word of less, describe your experience trying to set up your OneLink with Alexa after if dropped off and stopped respoding. The One Link app can no longer pair up to the device. ### 1/5 — Rubbish! Stay far away! *2025-06-03, version 1.84.6* These are by far the worst smoke alarms ever made. Constant false alarms. At least once a month they will go off and holding the silence button does nothing. You have to hit the button repeatedly for several minutes to actually make it stop. I bought 5 of them and replaced all of them in the past year just to have them still continue to give false alerts. This app is a giant scam. It fails to even alert you if the alarm is going off and will not silence them if they are. Onelink is trash, their alarms are trash and the whole company is trash and refuse to even acknowledge their products and app don’t work. ### 1/5 — Garbage *2025-03-17, version 1.84.6* Garbage , bad software ## Most praised reviews (10 highest-rated) ### 5/5 — Worked perfectly the first time for me *2022-08-31, version 1.84.0* I don’t understand all the 1 star reviews. I used this app to set up a Onelink Safe & Sound. It was absurdly easy and quick. The app does a few things, which all work perfectly. After adding to HomeKit, I use that mostly, but the app is still used for a couple things like doing a test and turning the Alexa microphone on/off. I would suggest one thing: when turning off the Alexa microphone, it turns on a red light on the device, which is super annoying. I would prefer an option to have no light displayed, or at least options for some other color/brightness because red makes me think there is a problem, and it is too bright for my dark bedroom. I am very happy with this device and app so far. ### 5/5 — Good *2021-11-17, version 1.82.6* After reading the Wirecutter “…in our long-term testing, we’ve seen a significant improvement in reliability in the app” I figured I’d bite the bullet. I’ve had no issues so far. ### 5/5 — Works fine *2020-10-25, version 1.79.36* I’m not sure what all the vitrol is about. I bought two battery Onelink smoke and CO detectors. They connected fine to 2.4Ghz Wi-Fi and Homekit. It does take up to 90 seconds to receive a smoke alert using cellular data only despite the alarms ringing up to 90 seconds locally first. I got a notification via the Onelink app, and a few seconds later, I received a notification via Homekit. I tested by producing smoke near the detectors and not running the test in the app. If people want an immediate notification, they will be disappointed. Anyway, as long as I’m notified within a couple minutes of local detection, I don’t mind. ### 5/5 — Still working after almost a year! *2020-10-07, version 1.79.36* I’ve had minimal issues with these detectors. I had to hire an electrician to install them and was able to connect with HomeKit on the second attempt. Love the ability to remotely check their status. Although I’m not sure if I’m able to remotely test them! ### 5/5 — Perfect *2020-04-25, version 1.79.26* Worked perfectly. Easy setup and install. I use HomeKit for everything in my home. Supper easy to install on my iOS device and easy Siri setup. I even called support on a Saturday during COVID lockdown and they were there for a quick question. ### 5/5 — Works well *2019-12-10, version 1.79.19* Installed easily, reliable, integrates with HomeKit. I really don’t understand the one-star review I found here. Dramatic. ### 5/5 — “Setup Needed” button finally gone. Yay! *2018-12-12, version 1.79.3* After reaching out to customer service just yesterday before this update about my smoke detector alway showing a “Setup needed” button that always hangs when you try pressing it, I was told very promptly that it was a known issue and that they’re team was working on it. And now that the error message has gone away in this update, I’m very happy with OneLink. Also, they’re customer service so far is quick, responsive, and informative. Judging from the low ratings of this app, First Alert is certainly having their fair share of technical hurdles, but so far I’m satisfied with their responsiveness and efforts in trying to fix their app. Keep up the good work and thanks again! ### 5/5 — Huge improvements! *2018-06-05, version 1.75* All of the issues I experienced in the past seem to have been resolved with the latest big update. My Environment Monitors are working wonderfully and I am able to update settings without the previous issue of them not saving. ### 4/5 — Excellent Setup Experience *2022-07-23, version 1.83.2* Based on other reviews, I wonder if the issues mentioned are related to hardware model differences, as my setup experience was excellent. I replaced three hardwired detectors with the Onelink Smart Smoke and Carbon Monoxide detectors. The setup wizard was clear and helpful, the only issue was the each time the phones Bluetooth had to be toggled on and off before I could see the device show up - that app included that tip on the setup step. Adding to HomeKit was part of the setup and it worked flawlessly. The app itself includes testing and silencing options as well as small details like “Names used by Siri” so you can find out to speak to Siri to address say the nightlight on the detector. ### 4/5 — Worked for me! *2022-04-05, version 1.83.1* One thing I have learned with all of the HomeKit devices is if you want a smooth set up make sure the device you are using to set it up is connected to the 2.4 WiFi. It sometimes works using 5G to set up but 50/50 chance at best. Once set up you can go back to 5G to access. Set up two battery OneLink detectors in about three minutes each. Showed up immediately in Home App, so far so good. Hope I never have a reason to get a notice. From what I understand if you want to test to see if notification works used canned smoke. It doesn't trigger notification to the Home hub until it has been sounding for about a minute per some on line literature I found. Supposedly works that way for two reasons. First is to avoid false or burnt toast alarms. Second is because it is only battery powered it does not maintain a constant WiFi connection. Has to use Bluetooth to notify to activate WIFi first. --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-07-20.*