Many of our favorite photos are very hard to get: they're the candid, natural moments that happen in between the posed photos, like the fleeting yet adorable looks our pets or kids give us. Last October we shared that we’ve been working on Google Clips, a lightweight, hands-free camera that uses on-device machine learning to help you capture beautiful and spontaneous moments of family, friends, pets, and yourself. Simply turn the camera on and it will capture and edit clips of these moments, while letting you join in as well.

Starting today, Clips is available in the U.S. for $249 from the Google Store, Best Buy, B&H and Verizon.

Clips isn’t designed to replace your smartphone camera or your DSLR. It’s a new type of camera that captures the moments that happen in between posed pictures by using on-device machine learning to look for great facial expressions from the people—and pets—in your life. It turns these into short clips without you having to use video editing software. Clips comes with a companion app on Android or iOS that lets you share your content with friends or other apps. You can also pick any frame from these clips to save as a high-resolution still photo.

Designed for privacy and control

From day one working on Clips, we knew privacy and control were extremely important, and we’ve been careful to design and engineer Clips to uphold those principles:

• It looks like a camera and has an indicator light, so everyone around knows what it does and when it’s on. It also works best when it’s less than 10 feet away from what it’s capturing so you can see where it is in the room.
  
• It doesn’t need a data connection to function, nor does it require an account. We miniaturized machine learning models to run locally on the device.
  
• Just like a traditional point-and-shoot camera, none of your clips leave your device until you decide to save or share them. If you decide to save clips to Google Photos, then clips will be backed up to your Google Account if you have Backup and Sync turned on in the Google Photos app.
  

Tips for using Clips

We think you’ll find that the camera is one part familiar to the point-and-shoot you’ve used in past, and one part brand new. Here are a few pointers on how it works:

• Clips looks for stable, clear shots of people and then looks for good facial expressions, such as joy. We also trained it to recognize dogs and cats, and it prefers when there’s some motion in the scene. Once the lens is twisted clockwise, it’ll turn on and start capturing.

• People and pets look best when they’re three to eight feet away from the camera—think playroom, not soccer field.

• The Clipstand that comes with the Clips device makes it easy to set down, hold, or clip the camera to things like a chair or vase to get unique vantage points. There’s also a feature called Live Preview in the Clips app to provide a clear view of the action as it happens.

• Clips comes with a shutter button on the device (and in the app) which lets you capture something specific. Clips understands faces, smiles, dogs and cats, but doesn’t know a surfboard from a ski slope (there’s a great phone for those pictures!). For those times you want to capture a photo manually, you can use the button on the front of the device or in the Clips app.

• Over time, Clips will learn who you want to photograph frequently. You can also give it a head start by letting it learn from photos downloaded from your Google Photos library, or by taking a portrait using the shutter button.

• Use the Clips app to view, save, delete and share your clips, and to choose any frame to save as a high-resolution still or motion photo. If you use Google Photos, finding your clips and stringing them into beautiful movies is a snap. And Pixel users get unlimited backup.
  

Since Clips has machine learning at its core, it will keep getting better over time. We’re excited to help you capture more of the moments you love with Clips.

Smart homes are no longer just a thing of the future. They make families feel safer with connected security systems. They help you save energy and money with intelligent thermostats. And they offer hands-free help and answers to a universe of questions with voice-activated smart assistants.

Since Nest joined Google four years ago, the team has experienced incredible momentum. The company doubled its hardware portfolio last year—selling more devices in 2017 than the previous two years combined. Meanwhile, Google has sold tens of millions of products for the home in just the last year, as more people use the Google Assistant to listen to their favorite music, control their connected devices, and get useful information about their day.

To build on this momentum, we're excited to bring the Nest and Google Hardware teams together. The goal is to supercharge Nest’s mission: to create a more thoughtful home, one that takes care of the people inside it and the world around it. By working together, we’ll continue to combine hardware, software and services to create a home that’s safer, friendlier to the environment, smarter and even helps you save money—built with Google’s artificial intelligence and the Assistant at the core.

We’ve had a head start on collaborating since our teams already work closely together, and today we’re excited to make Nest an integral part of Google’s big bet on hardware.

This week we’re debuting our newest hardware star to hit shelves: Google Pixelbook. Pixelbook combines the best parts of a laptop, a tablet, and a smartphone into a new, high performance Chromebook that’s designed to fit how we use technology today. And now Pixelbook can be yours, starting at $999. Here are 10 ways Google Pixelbook, along with its companion the Pixelbook Pen, are standout performers.

1. Does it all. Pixelbook is fully convertible so it can adapt to any situation or task. With a 4-in-1 design, you can use it as a laptop for work or school, as a tablet to read a book or take notes, in tent mode as you follow along with a recipe in the kitchen, or flip the keyboard underneath and prop it up to watch your favorite show or movie.

2. This show goes on the road. Pixelbook is our thinnest and lightest laptop ever—just 10.3mm thin and about 1 kilogram light—making it super portable.

3. Knows its lines (even without the script). With Google Drive, Pixelbook automatically backs up your most recent Google Docs, Sheets and Slides files so you can keep working, even without an internet connection.

4. A VIP pass to all the best apps. Pixelbook supports Google Play, so you can use all the apps you know and love...right on your laptop. Download Netflix to watch your favorite series on the commute, even offline, or use Adobe Lightroom to edit a photo before you post it to Instagram, right from your Pixelbook.

5. Roll out the red carpet. Pixelbook is the first laptop with the Google Assistant built in. Just say “Ok Google” or press the dedicated Google Assistant key to send a quick email, create a new doc, get the details of your next calendar event and more. With Pixelbook Pen, you can simply press and hold the button on the pen and circle text or images on your screen to get more information or take action.

6. The show must go on… and on. Pixelbook boots up fast and keeps going, with up to 10 hours of use. When you’re low on juice, just 15 minutes of charging will get you up to two hours of use.

7. Everything’s buttoned up backstage. Your Pixelbook comes with the speed, simplicity and security of Chrome OS, which means it will automatically update when online with the latest software and it won’t slow down over time. It’s also protected from malware with multiple layers of protection and encrypted data with tamper-resistant hardware.

8. Autograph-ready. Pixelbook Pen gives you a natural writing and drawing experience with virtually no lag—plus tilt-support and pressure sensitivity. Take notes right from the lockscreen with Google Keep, draw with Infinite Painter, and more.

9. Has its own entourage (just like the biggest stars). Your Pixelbook works seamlessly with your Pixel phone so if you’re not within range of a Wi-Fi network, you can use Instant Tethering to automatically connect your Pixelbook to your phone’s mobile data connection.

10. Can fit your whole reel. Pixelbook comes with three storage options going up to half a terabyte (that’s a lot) of on-device storage so you can easily store your favorite shows, movies and music too.