What's the Hold setting on my ecobee thermostat, and how do I use it?



What is a hold?

Whenever you manually adjust your ecobee to a different temperature that’s not the scheduled set point, your ecobee will go into a “hold." This means instead of following your set schedule, your thermostat will follow the hold action until the hold is manually cancelled, or until your preferred hold action setting kicks in.  

How does it work? 

You can set a hold action in a variety of ways – by manually changing the temperature either on the thermostat itself or the app, through the quick changes menu, selecting "hold for now" or "away for now,"or if you are using any 3rd party apps such as Alexa, HomeKit, Smart Things, or Google.   

A few things to note:

  • Any manual changes made through with the quick changes menu, or selecting home/ away for now, will result in indefinite holds and will need to be manually cancelled.
  • Any holds applied from these third-party apps will be indefinite holds as their platforms to do not copy your hold settings that you currently have set in the ecobee. We are working with many integration platforms to change this, but there is no estimated time frame for that at the moment.  

How does sensor participation work when there is a hold?

Any time you make a manual adjustment and put the thermostat in a hold, your sensors will follow the sensor participation of your Home comfort setting.

This is hardcoded into the ecobee and these parameters cannot be changed.

How do I adjust the hold setting? 

The default Hold action is “until you change it,” but you can configure how long they will remain in effect. You can change your hold preference to hold for 2 hours, 4 hours, Until the Next Scheduled Activity, Until I Change It or Decide at the Time of Change. 

To do this, just tap MAIN MENU > SETTINGS > PREFERENCES > HOLD ACTION and make the changes you like.

How do I cancel a hold?

Easy! You will just want to tap on the "X" in the top left corner of the text box on the thermostat, or select the "Cancel" text box on the app. By cancelling the hold, the thermostat will resume your schedule. 

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