Ring end-to-end encryption turns off 22 features
Ring's own page lists them, and this week it renamed itself “legacy”. What you lose, what does not come back, and what the other makers publish.
Last updated · source-check dates are listed at the foot of this page
On this page
Ring end-to-end encryption turns off 22 features, and Ring's own support page lists every one of them. Not a leak, not an estimate — a list, published by Ring, on the page that explains the feature.
It matters this week because that page has just renamed itself.
Twenty-two features is the price of keeping Ring's video private. A camera that records to a hub in your house never had to make that trade — nothing is transmitted, so there is nothing to encrypt against.
Check the price on Amazoneufy HomeBase 3 (S380)(paid link)What does Ring's end-to-end encryption turn off?
Twenty-two features, by Ring's own count on its own page. They fall into five groups: sharing and web access, notification previews, the detection that tells a person from a car, recorded history, and viewing on an Echo Show or Fire TV.
| What it affects | Features that stop working |
|---|---|
| Sharing and web access | Shared User access to videos · Share Video Links · Video access on Ring.com · Live View on more than one device at once |
| Notifications and previews | Rich Notifications · Video Preview Alerts · Camera previews · Snapshot Capture · Pre-Roll |
| Telling a person from a car | Person Detection · Familiar Faces · Motion Verification · Video Verification · Video Descriptions |
| Recorded history | 24/7 Video Recording · Event Timeline · Video Search · Single Event Alert |
| Other screens and services | Echo Show, Fire TV and third-party devices · Bird's Eye View · Virtual Security Guard · Quick Replies |
Ring lists these as a flat list of twenty-two; the grouping is ours, and the wording of each feature is Ring's. Counted twice, because the first count taken from this page was 24 and was wrong.
The third group is the one that changes daily life. Our notifications page says every brand alerts you without a subscription — and four of the 22 are exactly that: Rich Notifications, Video Preview Alerts, Camera previews and Person Detection. Encryption does what no subscription tier does, and switches the filtering off.
The first group is the subject of the police-request page. Share Video Links is how a Ring video reaches an investigator; with encryption on, there is no link to share.
Is Ring turning end-to-end encryption on by default?
That is reported rather than confirmed here. What can be verified is that Ring retitled its own article “Using legacy video end-to-end encryption” and was updating it daily in the last week of August 2026.
A company renames a feature legacy when it is about to ship the replacement. On both days this page was researched, that article reported itself updated within the previous 24 hours — and Ring's own blog carried no announcement of any of it on 28 August 2026.
What the rename supports on its own is narrower and still useful: the version documented today is being described by Ring as the old one.
Does turning end-to-end encryption off again restore everything?
No. Ring publishes a table of what comes back automatically and shared users are the one row marked no — they have to be re-added by hand. Unenrolling also loses access to every video recorded while encryption was on.
| Feature | Comes back automatically? |
|---|---|
| Shared Users | No — must be re-added by hand |
| Viewing encrypted videos on Ring.com | Yes |
| Camera previews on the dashboard | Yes |
| Event Timeline | Yes |
| Video Preview Alerts | Yes |
| Echo Show, Fire TV and Fire Tablet | Yes |
| Snapshot Capture, Pre-Roll, Bird's Eye View | Yes |
| Familiar Faces and Video Descriptions | Yes |
Ring's own re-enable table. One row says no, and it is the row about other people — a partner or a housemate loses access and has to be invited again. Ring also states that unenrolling loses access to every video recorded while encryption was on.
Read that second sentence twice, because it is the one that turns a setting into a decision. The videos recorded during the encrypted period are locked to a passphrase; leaving the scheme does not unlock them, it abandons them.
Which Ring devices cannot use end-to-end encryption?
Ring names six: Video Doorbell 1st Gen, Video Doorbell Wired, Stick Up Cam 1st Gen, Spotlight Cam 1st Gen, Spotlight Cam 2K and Floodlight Cam 2K. There is also a cap of five enrolled devices per account.
The limits Ring states in its own words
- Six devices cannot use it at all. Ring names "Video Doorbell (1st Gen), Video Doorbell Wired, Stick Up Cam (1st Gen), Spotlight Cam (1st Gen), Spotlight Cam 2K, and Floodlight Cam 2K" as not compatible.
- Five devices is the cap. "You can enroll up to five Ring devices in video end-to-end encryption."
- Lose the passphrase and the video is gone. "Without the passphrase, you will not have access to encrypted videos." Ring cannot recover it — that is the point of it.
Quoted from https://ring.com/support/articles/7e3lk/using-video-end-to-end-encryption-e2ee, read 28 August 2026.
The five-device cap is worth noticing in a product line sold on the idea of covering a whole house. A six-camera home cannot encrypt all six.
Do other camera makers offer end-to-end encryption?
Not in the same form, among the brands read for this page. Ring is the only one of the ten tracked here with a support article dedicated to it. Wyze documents AES 128-bit encryption of the stream, which is not the same thing, and eufy's answer is to keep the recording in your house.
| Brand | What is documented | In whose hands are the keys |
|---|---|---|
| Ring | A dedicated end-to-end encryption article | Yours |
| Wyze | AES 128-bit on the stream, in a privacy article | Wyze's |
| eufy | Encryption on the device, in a marketing page | Yours, at home |
The three brands actually read for this page, on 28 August 2026. The other seven were not all checked and are deliberately absent: “no article found” is not the same claim as “no encryption”, and this site does not make the second on the evidence of the first.
The distinction is who holds the key. Wyze writes that "the contents are encrypted via AES 128-bit encryption to protect the security of the live stream and playback data" — real protection, in transit, with Wyze able to decrypt. Ring's scheme is the other kind: "No one else, including Ring, can access your encrypted content."
eufy sidesteps the question by moving the footage rather than the keys: "As soon as data is created, it is encrypted and stored right on your security device, or securely transmitted to HomeBase™ for encryption and storage." Nothing to intercept, because nothing is sent.
So should you turn end-to-end encryption on?
It depends on which of the 22 you actually use. If your cameras exist to record an empty driveway and you never share a clip, the list costs you almost nothing and you get the strongest privacy guarantee any of these companies offers.
If you live with somebody who also opens the app, or you watch the doorbell on an Echo Show, or you rely on being told person rather than motion — then the list is most of why you bought the camera, and Ring has published that trade-off honestly rather than burying it.
The thing to avoid is finding out by accident. A setting you chose is a trade; a default you did not notice is a surprise, and the one row that does not come back by itself is the one about other people.
If none of that appeals, the cameras that keep footage on hardware you own never had the question in the first place, and Ring without a subscription is a different set of compromises again.
Cameras that never sent the video anywhere
Specifications as published by each maker, read 28 August 2026. Nothing was tested and nothing is ranked. Both of these answer the encryption question by not transmitting the recording in the first place, which is a different trade from Ring's and worth knowing about before you weigh up a list of 22.
- Form
- Base station for eufy cameras and sensors
- Storage
- 16 GB built in, expandable to 16 TB
- Expansion
- 2.5" SATA drive, 5V — 12V drives unsupported
- Subscription
- No monthly fee for local storage
- Form
- Outdoor camera on a bracket
- Power
- 5000 mAh battery, optional 6W solar panel
- Video goes to
- microSD in the camera, up to 512 GB
- Subscription
- Not required for local recording
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. This costs you nothing and never affects what is covered here.
How this was checked
Every Ring quotation, the 22 features, the re-enable table, the six incompatible devices and the five-device cap were read on 28 August 2026 from Ring's own article, which returns HTTP 200 to a plain request. The feature list was counted twice by hand: an earlier note in this project recorded 24, and 22 is the number on the page.
The Wyze quotations are from its Security & Privacy article, last updated 19 April 2024, reached through Wyze's help centre API because the HTML help centre returns 403 to us. The eufy quotations are from its local security page, read the same week.
No cameras were tested and no encryption was enabled for this article. The September default is reported by CNN on 26 August 2026; that page returns HTTP 451 to this server, so it has not been read here and is not quoted. Ring's own blog carried no announcement of it on 28 August 2026. The other seven brands this site tracks are absent from the comparison because they were not all checked — “no article found” is not “no encryption”.
Corrections
If Ring publishes the new scheme, the feature list will change and this page will be re-read and re-dated rather than left standing. The count of 22 is the most likely thing here to move, and it is the easiest to check: it is a list on one page. Plan prices, which encryption does not affect, stay on the tracker.
