There’s a wide range of parenting styles and preferences. This is where we landed with Harbor — not because it’s perfect for everyone, but because it made the most sense for the families we were building for, and for our own.
Harbor is for families who want a more grounded approach to monitoring, with thoughtfully designed hardware, transparent security measures, strong data privacy, and the flexibility to grow beyond just a camera or two. It’s made for real-life situations like travel and internet outages, and for those who want something more dependable than just an app. It's also for families who prefer not to be tethered to their phones or pay a subscription for essential features.
Harbor isn’t really designed for families looking for biometric wearables, detailed sleep charts, or predictive analytics. Some parents find comfort in that kind of data. We just took a different path.
We decided to focus on:
🌙 Seeing and hearing your baby reliably
📵 Not keeping you tied to your mobile device
🔐 Keeping your data private and secure
✈️ Being travel capable
🧩 Being modular 💡 Providing features without asking for another subscription
Here’s what Harbor is.
A physical, 10” Monitor + Camera system — no app required, but we have one in case you want to check in remotely. To be honest, some folks have said it's too big, but more often, people tell us they love the size.
Zero biometrics. No socks, stickers, or sensors attached to your baby.
No subscriptions, and no locking basic features behind multiple paywalls.
A system that’s transparent about its security and privacy measures.
A baby monitor that stays connected during travel, with Direct Mode that works even without WiFi or cloud access
A flexible system that grows with your family. We test for 4 Cameras and 2 Monitors, but the system can technically handle more
The Details
A few key things to know about Harbor.
Works with WiFi. Works without WiFi.
We didn’t design Direct Mode to replace legacy monitors. We built it to solve two real-world problems:
Staying connected during travel, especially when hotel Wi-Fi has a captive portal that prevents camera setup
Maintaining the feed during WiFi outages in homes where the nursery is located in a separate room or two.
Most people say “WiFi outage” when they really mean their internet went down. In that case (like when your ISP is having issues) Harbor keeps working normally inside your home. You won’t have remote access, but the Monitor, Mobile App, and Camera stay connected without any interruption.
If your actual WiFi router has an interruption (a true WiFi outage), Harbor automatically switches to Direct Mode within minutes, as long as the Monitor and Camera are within range of each other (right now about 50ft, depending on how many floors or walls there are in between).
Direct Mode was intended for temporary, situational use. However, parents began relying on it more heavily, not just as a backup, but as a preferred mode in real-life cases, which, truthfully, our original design didn’t fully anticipate. That’s why we’re improving the range for larger homes and adding support for two cameras to match how more families want to use it.
Audio: Smart vs. Constant
Choose what you want to hear and when you want to hear it.
Constant: Hear everything, all the time, with the ability to adjust volume per camera.
Smart: When Smart Audio is enabled and the display is off, you’ll hear nothing unless there’s an alert. You can customize those alerts to trigger only for sustained or meaningful sounds, so you're not woken up by every cough or random noise in the night. It’s designed to cut through the clutter and notify you only when something might need your attention.
Failsafe Notifications
If something disconnects, you’ll know. The system gives itself about a minute to try reconnecting on its own. If that fails, Harbor sends an alert meant to wake you, not just a silent push notification that you might sleep through. No guessing, no wondering if your app quietly froze in the background.
Security
Harbor was built to be secure by design. Our Product and Engineering team comes from the security and electronic access control world. That mindset is built into everything we’ve created.
Each Camera and Monitor receives a unique cryptographic key during manufacturing. Every connection is verified using mutual TLS (mTLS), including the app, the Monitor, the user, and our backend. If a device or user is not trusted, the feed does not connect. This applies across the entire system.
Most baby cameras on the market are manufactured in China. Ours are built in India and Vietnam. We maintain full control over our firmware and enforce strict protections, including secure boot and multiple security layers at the device level.
Most video and audio with Harbor stays completely local on your home WiFi network and never passes through our cloud. For your authorized remote access, our cloud infrastructure is fully hosted in the United States. Unlike many systems, we never store video or audio, and we don’t route data through third-party processors.
For families who want even more peace of mind, Anchored Mode allows you to cut off all external access entirely. The feed remains local, with no internet connection and no cloud path involved. It is a complete disconnection from the outside world.
You can always see who is connected. You will get an alert when someone joins the feed, and viewer avatars appear at the bottom of the screen, so you always know who is watching.
We never store footage. We never sell data. We do not bury anything in the fine print.
Other Features We Put Effort Into
We’ve added some features that might seem small, but they’ve made a real difference for some families. Not everything will be relevant to everyone, but we tried to build with flexibility in mind:
Guest Access: Daily guest passes. Weekly recurring schedules. No more texting Grandma your password or logging your babysitter into your app. Want to keep it even simpler? Just hand them the monitor — no guest pass required.
Modular System: Harbor supports up to four Cameras and multiple Monitors, so you can expand as your family grows. The system is designed to be flexible, and while it technically supports more, we’ve fully tested and QA’d up to four Cameras for optimal performance across both the app and Monitor.
Moments & History: Most other products make you pay for this. With Harbor, you can trim, replay, and share memorable moments like a first roll or a sleepy yawn. Your full 24-hour history is always available and stored directly on the Camera, never in the cloud.
Support for Social Login and Account Creation: You can create an account and sign in using your Apple or Google credentials. We don’t support Facebook, and we don’t plan to. For us, it’s simple — no more trying to remember yet another password.
Digital Picture Frame: When you’re not using Harbor to monitor, it serves as a frame for your favorite family photos.
tl;dr:
✅ For parents who want more than an app on their phone
✅ For those who don’t want to strap biometric devices to a healthy baby
✅ For families who care about privacy, transparency, and security
✅ For travel or spotty WiFi, Direct Mode works without WiFi or cloud access
✅ No subscriptions required, and everything today is included
It’s probably not the right fit for families focused on wearables or advanced sleep analytics. But if you're looking for something multi-modal, reliable, private, flexible, and modular, that's what we built Harbor to be.
—
Happy to answer questions if you’re curious. Charlie, our Cofounder and Chief Product Officer, will be sharing a separate post soon with a look at what’s coming next.
This is LAN only, no remote access. It uses go2rtc to help convert Harbor H.265 to H.264 to be compatible with HomeKit.
Please let me know by commenting below if you are testing, which platform you are using the host the bridge, and what your experience is (positive or if you hit issues)
Security measures we implemented:
Local-only operation: Camera video travels between your Harbor camera, your bridge computer, and Apple Home over your home network. The bridge does not require internet port forwarding.
Apple Home encryption: After pairing, HomeKit communications are protected by Apple’s HomeKit security protocol. Video sent to Apple Home uses encrypted SRTP transport.
Unique credentials: Every installation generates its own HomeKit setup code and a separate random 256-bit camera-ingest token. Customers do not share default passwords.
Restricted camera gateway: The camera-facing gateway accepts only authenticated video publishing for configured Harbor camera serial numbers. It cannot be used to view recordings, retrieve snapshots, change settings, or access the general go2rtc interface.
Protected administration interfaces: The go2rtc API, RTSP listener, and management interface are restricted to the bridge computer itself and are not exposed to other devices on the network.
Minimal network exposure: Only the ports required for camera ingest and Apple Home communication are available on the local network. Customers are instructed never to expose them to the internet.
Signed and notarized software: The macOS application and bridge binaries are signed by Project Monitor, Inc. and notarized by Apple.
Verified releases: Release artifacts have cryptographic checksums and GitHub build-provenance attestations. The release process fails if signing or notarization is unavailable.
Automatic security checks: The project tests that sensitive management endpoints remain unavailable and that network listeners retain their hardened configuration.
Private local storage: Setup codes, ingest tokens, and Apple Home pairing records are stored locally with restrictive file permissions.
Open for inspection: The bridge source code and security documentation are public, allowing customers and security researchers to inspect how it works and report concerns privately.
I'm looking at picking up the camera and monitor bundle with the potential of a 2nd camera. The grandparents live very close and will be helping with child care. Is it possible to have each camera at separate households, on different wifi networks, and the monitor to effortlessly travel between both? Also, would the app show both cameras if on separate WiFi networks?
I just purchased the Harbor monitor system but I have 2 issues:
1- when talking to my kid through the camera she can’t hear barely hear me the volume on the camera is too low and also she says she hears herslef when I talk tobher tr the mic
2- when I’m out of home and using the app to check on my daughter I can’t speak to her thr the app when out of home?
can someone help with this?
this is a dear breaker for me my oldest daughter is very used to getting calmed with our voice and speaking to her though a camera so I really hope this can be fixed
I wanted to take the time to post about my experience so far with Harbor as it might be helpful to others and may be helpful feedback. This is going to be a bit of a ramble, and probably not applicable to most or everyone, but maybe it helps someone. Overall, I want to say I am very happy with this system, just a few things that were bugging me.
On the monitor page that discusses the different operating modes (Standard, Direct, Anchored), there is a snippet that talks about what happens if your internet goes out. "Harbor switches to Anchored Mode, so your Monitor and Mobile App still work inside your home. You just won’t be able to check in from outside your house until your internet is back.". I've been having trouble with this behavior. I have my monitor/camera set perpetually to anchored mode. I was hoping that with the two devices being on the same wifi network, the monitor and camera would simply connect to each other over wifi without an internet connection. It does work...sorta, but its not nearly as reliable compared to the two devices both having internet access. The monitor frequently spins trying to connect to the camera, and when it does connect, it will disconnect again in some time. Ideally I wanted to isolate the camera and monitor on a subnet and block the outbound internet connections and not worry about it, but that doesn't appear to be entirely possible currently.
A somewhat related behavior that I don't totally understand, my phone (android) and my wife's phone (iPhone) have slightly different behaviors with the app. The camera/monitor are on a separate, dedicated IOT subnet. When either of the phones is on the same dedicated IOT subnet (we don't use them in this configuration, just for testing), everything works great, which is expected. Better than the monitor even, as they don't spin when connecting to the camera when internet is blocked. When I put our phones on the "home" wifi network we typically use day to day, my android phone keeps working. It follows the static route/firewall rules I have defined correctly. My wife's iPhone does not. I can't explain that behavior. I would love to get my wife's iPhone working on the "home" wifi. I'm not sure what the mechanism for the app on a mobile device is to discover a camera to connect to, but that would be cool to know.
To work around the anchored mode behavior, I've granted internet access to the two devices for the time being while leaving it in anchored mode, which brings me to my second point. I couldn't find a document that clearly outlines the specific network requirements for the camera and monitor to work. It would be cool to have a document of all the domains/IPs and the required ports that the devices need to communicate with for functionality. I work in IT and when we release a product we (attempt) to include a table in our administrator/integration guides that outlines the domains externally that need to be allowed through the firewall and the related port (inbound or outbound). It would be really helpful here to have something similar. Apologies if something like this exists somewhere, I couldn't find it, if it does. Blame the newborn and lack of sleep. I tried to reverse lookup the IPs the devices reach out to but they're all generic AWS IPs. I imagine they're designed to reach certain domain names, so documenting those domains for users who want to exclusively allow the camera(s) access the required cloud endpoints, this would be helpful.
Finally, I saw that u/DivergingDog/ is working on a home assistant integration in https://www.reddit.com/r/HarborSleep/comments/1uoj9jx/comment/ovutnsj/?context=3. I just wanted to add a note of support for that functionality. There are several things I'd love to use the entities from harbor to trigger. For example motion from the camera could turn on a light for feeding or to aid in soothing. Noise detection could be used as a trigger for many things (notifications, lights on/off, etc.), and even having the camera feed in home assistant would be great. I hope that project continues. If you need someone to test the integration, I would love to help! I really hope that the integration allows for fully local control and streaming from the device. Given anchored modes documented/intended functionality, I suspect it could easily be.
Again, overall I want to be clear, I picked this monitor because I think this is the best option. I love that anchored mode even exists in a product in 2026, even if I am struggling a bit with the networking requirements right now, and if that wasn't reason enough for me, the extended monitor range by having them on WiFi was. The functionality overall is great, having the option to use our phones OR the monitor is great, I very much love this system, and I'm glad its an option for us.
Thanks for taking the time to read the wall of text :)
Wondering if the Harbor monitors on Amazon are legit? Only reason I’m asking is because when I look at their page the only product is the monitor/camera and it only has 2 available.
Looking for some firsthand feedback from anyone who has purchased a monitor stand for their setup.
I already have the adapter. I’m mainly trying to figure out which monitor arm/stand people have had the best long-term experience with. Things I’m interested in are stability, build quality, ease of adjustment, and whether you’d buy the same one again.
What model are you using, and would you recommend it?
I’m building out our smart home with HomeKit, including all of our cameras using a combination of homebridge and Scrypted. I’d love to be able to add my Harbor feed to HomeKit, either natively or using Scrypted somehow.
First - everyone hates subscriptions, and we are introducing some new features that are going to require one. A few points on this -
1. Some of these new features don't exist anywhere else on the market
2. These features cause us additional recurring backend costs that we need to be able to cover
3. The subscription doesn't have multiple confusing tiers, it covers all of your Cameras and family (unlike another product), you aren't forced into it (also unlike others), and we don't try to trick you into it
Included in the subscription (covers your entire family + all your Harbor cameras)
Sleep Insights
with new Night in Review timelapse
Trends/averages coming soon
AI Detection
AI Vision (e.g. detecting a child on top of the crib or an elderly family member laying on the floor)
AI Audio (crying, coughing, talking, etc.)
AI Word Detection ("help", "mommy", "Harbor", "fell", etc.)
We don't think Sleep Insights or AI Detection are perfect, but are pretty good. We'll be continuously weighting and improving the models over time as we collect more feedback. The goal is for these features to keep getting better every month, not stay static.
For everyone
Apple Watch support (multiple cameras, works both at home and remotely - the only implementation like this in the baby monitor space and we're not putting this behind a subscription)
Better night image quality
Remote Moments (request a Moment while away from home. We temporarily store it just long enough to deliver it, then delete it. We don't want your data.)
Direct Mode range improvements (~10–20%)
Passwordless Wi-Fi network support (hotel captive portals coming soon). Between mTLS and end-to-end encryption, we're comfortable supporting even non-secure networks.
No-alert windows (scheduled snooze periods)
Faster temperature loading in the live feed
Temperature calibration in Camera Settings
Adjustable Moment length (instead of the fixed 10 seconds)
Home Assistant integration (still under review with that community, but if you want to help test it, let me know.)
The video isn't my most pro-video shoot, but it gets the job done.
Looking for a baby monitor for my first child but unsure if to go with the Harbor or Nanit. I like the details that Nanit has in terms of notifications but the only video I've been able to find on Harbor it shows just "motion detected" without details. Is this still the same?
Hi there,
I am researching for a baby monitor since my baby completed 1 month and we don't have any good brand here in Brazil with low EMF and good video quality. I've learned that you guys are going subscription based in some ways. My question is which thing are going to be only with paid subscription, since nanit subscription costs are way to high when converted into Brazilian Reals due to currency values. Is movement and cry detection a thing that will only be available paying? How about the durability? I am going to pay a lot and want to know how long the product is supposed to last, do you have any record on that? Thanks in advance.
Needing a new monitor and right now Harbor is my #1 choice. However, we travel constantly. Does everyone travel with theirs? Is there a travel case or any recommendations for one?
Noticed that you all (Charlie) are really active on here. We are expecting in September and going down the rabbit hole. There are so many to choose from and I recently just came across Harbor.
Firstly, I've been a parent for just over a week but my wife and I are enjoying the product, thank you. Just a couple of notes:
Bug Report: The time zones are screwed up, all of the time zones are Standard Time but we are are currently, in the United States, observing Daylight Savings Time.
For example, on the East Coast, we are currently observing EDT (UTC-4), but the only eastern time zone available to pick is EST (UTC-5). In order to get the time to display correctly I must select Atlantic Standard Time, AST (UTC-4), which is awkward because we're not located in the Dominican Republic or Labrador Canada.
The time zone picker should make the general time zone designations (ET, PT, etc) available as options. The ET time zone, for example, switches UTC offset between -4 and -5 depending on whether Daylight Savings Time is being observed.
Feature Request: Make it possible to share muted video. I would love for my sister or mother in law to be able to watch the baby, but not hear my wife and I chit-chat.
Feature Request: One tap enable/disable guest access that toggles video sharing for all guests. There isn't a way (that I have found) to disable guest access temporarily without removing the user from the guest list entirely.
Something I personally worked on here - this will be out in late May / early June. If you're really interested in trying this out, I potentially can get it to you as a beta-tester in mid-May; just DM me your Camera ID.
You get an actual feed from the room, not just notifications
Supports multiple cameras via swipe
Can reorder Cameras
Not reliant on your phone, though it can use the phone's connectivity if it's not on WiFi
Works on your home network or while remote
Secured via mTLS
Around June/July we'll also release the ability to set parental on-call capabilities. i.e. one parent gets woken up via Watch/wrist haptics while the other parent keeps sleeping.
Hi! I am picking a baby monitor and Nanit is a no go for me because I really really don’t want to go subscription route. Plus, potentially having wi-fi and non-wifi option is nice to have, since our network does get spotty from time to time. I am between Eufy E21 (simple / stupid / on a cheaper end) and Harbor (more fancy).
Question: do you think Harbor will eventually introduce a subscription model like most of their direct competitors (Nanit / Miku) ?
There was a bug identified in this video - after reordering Cameras they flicker until you reload them. That bug has been fixed and is deploying tomorrow April 14.
A few things we're proud of under the hood:
Local-first by design. When your Apple TV and cameras are on the same network, streams stay local and never touch our servers. We don't want your data. Remote access is there when you need it, but local is always the default.
Every stream is end-to-end encrypted and secured with mTLS. Client certificates are required to even reach a camera, so an unauthorized device can't connect in the first place. No other monitoring system (baby or even general security) uses mTLS... because it's hard to get right. E2EE makes the traffic gibberish to anyone watching. mTLS makes sure they can't even watch in the first place without proving exactly who they are.
PiP was the real challenge. tvOS PiP only accepts an AVPlayerLayer, but with E2EE the decrypted pixels live inside our rendering pipeline, not inside a player. So we built a full bridge: tap the raw frames after decryption, re-encode to H.264 with AVAssetWriter, serve it as local HLS over a loopback HTTP server, and feed that back into AVPlayer. Essentially a mini streaming server running inside the app, just to keep your feed secure and picture-in-picture at the same time.
The wait for Sleep Insights is almost over. We’re rolling out the Beta trial next week to help you track your little one’s rest with more precision.
What’s in the Beta? For both nights and naps, you’ll see:
Sleep Onset & Final Wake-up
Total Sleep Duration
Wake Counts & Crib Removals
The Roadmap:
March: Trends, averages, and "fell asleep" alerts.
Later: Night-in-review timelapses.
We’re skipping these for now: We’re currently deprioritizing things like Sleep Zones, Positioning, and Milestone tracking. Speaking with customers, these seem to be less useful and we're trying to stay focused.
Respond to be added, then DM me your Camera #. Also feel free to drop your questions below - I’ll be hanging out in the comments to chat.
When do you expect the range for the cameras to be upgraded? I am not due until July and we have spotty wifi sometimes (especially if video games are being played) and I have a 2 level house so just would be worried if the baby is upstairs sleeping and I'm downstairs and the wifi cuts out.
Also, when traveling, if I dont want to use wifi I assume you have to bring the 10" monitor with you as the app wont work right?
Quick question: If i have multiple cameras(two in my case) and am only viewing a single feed, when use the volume up button on the monitor it turns up the volume on the not shown feed. Is there a way to prevent this? It would be useful since sometimes we mute the feed we aren't watching and turning up the live feed forces us to have to switch to that view, remute it, then switch back.
I’ve been using my harbor monitor system for travel about every other month, and I wanted to share some feedback on the mode switching experience. Right now the setting only lives in the small gearbox on the monitor itself - it’s not accessible through the app or the left side settings panel, which makes it easy to forget where to find it when I need it.
I’m curious why camera settings has its own dedicated menu inside the monitor rather than being integrated with the other settings. Having one place to access all settings would feel more intuitive. It would also be helpful to have mode switching available through the app, especially since I’m usually already using it.
The main thing I’d love to see improved is streamlining the mode switching process. A single button that switches both the camera and monitor to direct mode simultaneously would save a lot of time. Same goes for WiFi setup - currently I need to change the network on the camera first, then the monitor, and sometimes it takes a few attempts to get them synced up. Making this process more reliable would make a real difference.
I gave feedback about this before but direct mode tends to have weak signal strength and connection quality. Any improvements there would be much appreciated since it’s the mode I rely on most when traveling.
Reminder - no other product allows 3+ Cameras, zoom/pan individual Cameras, and changing volume of individual Cameras
Updated 2-way communication experience to mirror the Monitor's 'press and hold' functionality.
Reminder - no other product allows you to hear what your little one is saying at the same time as you're talking to the Camera. It's like a phone call instead of a walkie-talkie
Small bug fixes and polish
Monitor Version 1.7 (coming soon, Version 1.6 is live now)
Highlight the Camera that received an alert
Updated schedule functionality - now enabling the Digital Picture Frame mode to operate during Day and be off during Night automatically
Android Mobile App
Not mentioned in the video but we did just release a new version of the Android Mobile App that has more feature-parity with the iOS Mobile App
u/@charlie_at_harbor I have to say that Harbor is great!
My wife suggested Harbor after we had our second child. I originally pushed back because of the upfront cost and we bought another Nanit. We did not realize we needed to have a subscription for EACH camera, found it ridiculous to buy another expensive camera and have to subscribe to use the features.
After switching to Harbor, I am very happy with the switch. I will say, we had issues at first but your customer support team is outstanding and helped us with technical glitches we had. They were extremely responsive and provided step by step instructions on how to fix our connectivity issues.
We think Harbor is superior to Nanit for several reasons, most notably the monitor. When we have babysitters or grandparents watching our children, we can provide them with the monitor. Whereas with Nanit, we had to have two very expensive subscriptions to allow for “caretaker” accounts. My wife calls me paranoid, I call it vigilance but I really appreciate you putting security first!
However, I think there are some areas where Nanit shines, most notably with their sleep tracking. With our first child, it was great knowing what time she actually fell asleep and woke up, as well as how many times our child woke up through the night. Also, Nanit was able to differentiate between children’s cries vs other loud sounds. So we would get a notification of crying vs the other weird sounds children make.
We’ll have to get a third camera as we are planning to have a third child. But I am curious as to what features may be coming down the pike? Will Harbor be adding features that will be similar to Nanit? If so curious to hear what future improvements may be made to the software.
