Neato Robot Vacuums Return to Dumb Mode After Company Cuts Cloud Services

You know what sucks? Not Neato vacuums. According to an email sent to users that was obtained by The Verge, the popular robot vacuum from the now-defunct Neato Robotics will permanently go offline following a decision by its parent company to shut down cloud services, rendering the app no longer functional and, by extension, the robots significantly less useful.

Owners of Neato vacuums won’t have to go entirely without the support of their robo floor sweeper, but functionality will revert entirely to Manual mode. That means users will no longer be able to activate or control the robovac remotely via the MyNeato app. It also means that they won’t be able to set custom routines or schedule regular cleanings. The only way to set the vacuum to run is by manually pressing the physical power button on the machine, so the device can mindlessly bounce around between rooms for a bit.

This day was going to come eventually for Neato vacuums, which had its doors closed in 2023 by German parent company Vorwerk Group after its “failure to meet economic goals.” At the time, Vorwerk promised it would keep the cloud online for no less than five years, ensuring owners of a Neato vac could continue to keep their floors clean for half a decade.

Turns out that was not a firm promise.

In the email sent to Neato robot vacuum owners, Vorwerk explained the decision: “Since Neato ceased operations in 2023, Vorwerk has continued maintaining the Neato cloud platform to honor the original five-year service promise. However, cybersecurity standards, compliance obligations, and regulations have advanced in ways that make it no longer possible to safely and sustainably operate these legacy systems.”

The vacuums will still technically work, at least, so they aren’t entirely useless, but this has just been the way of the internet-connected appliance trend. Earlier this year, Google announced that it would drop support for the earliest generations of its Nest smart thermostat, cutting off cloud support and rendering it a standard, manually-operated one. Belkin, too, got in on the fun of bricking functionality, saying that it would cut off support for most of its Wemo products, including smart light switches, plugs, cameras, and other devices.

Whatever additional value internet connectivity provides to devices, it also ties consumers even tighter to a company’s whims. If they decide the cost of continuing to keep a product online outweighs whatever they are getting from said device, they can just shut it down. After all, they already got your money.