What Can I Do if I Can’t Find my Tapo Camera in the Tapo App?

If your device does not appear on your app after completing the configuration process, please try the following troubleshooting suggestions:

1. If you are using a Wi-Fi connection to access your camera, please verify the camera has successfully connected to the router. You can verify whether the camera is connected to Wi-Fi by checking the System light of your camera. For most Tapo Cameras, if it is not connected properly, the LED light will slowly blink red. For the HomeKit versions of Tapo Cameras, its LED indicator will slowly blink blue. If the camera cannot connect properly, we recommend resetting the camera to its factory default settings as outlined in the User Guide and then reconfiguring the camera.

For instructions on how to reset your camera, please refer to How to reset my Tapo camera

2. Check the DHCP settings on your router and ensure that the DHCP Server of your router is enabled. If the camera has already connected to the router properly, you will see it in the DHCP client list of your router. If you don’t know how to find your router’s DHCP client list, please contact your router’s customer support.

3. Connect your smartphone to the same Wi-Fi network as your camera and check whether you can see it in the Tapo app. If you can see it, this means the camera is unable to connect to the cloud, so you cannot access it remotely. In this case, verify whether any firewall or security settings are blocking the connection to the Cloud Server. Temporarily disable any antivirus, firewall, or security software to see if it resolves the issue.

4. Using a public DNS server may improve the connection, try changing your router's DNS server settings to 8.8.8.8. If you don't know how to do this, please contact your router's customer support.

5. Verify whether there are any special symbols in your Tapo account (TP-Link ID) password. If there are, try to remove them and make the account password simpler by only using numbers and English letters. Then reset and add the camera from the beginning again.

To rule out potential issues caused by the router's Wi-Fi network, it is recommended to use a mobile hotspot to configure the Camera to test its functionality.

To use a mobile hotspot to test the Camera's configuration, please refer to the following steps:

Before beginning: We suggest having two phones. Use one phone (Phone A) to create a hotspot and use another phone (Phone B) to download the Tapo app and complete the setup process (on Phone B).

Steps:

1. On Phone A, disable Wi-Fi and enable mobile data.
2. On Phone A, navigate to the phone’s settings and find the "Personal Hotspot" or "Mobile Hotspot" option, ensuring that the hotspot feature is enabled. Please make sure the created hotspot operates on a 2.4GHz network.
3. Set a unique name and password for the hotspot that is different from your router's Wi-Fi.
4. On Phone B, download the Tapo app. Follow the app's instructions to add the device and complete the remaining setup steps as guided by the app.

if the issue persists after the above suggestions, please contact TP-Link technical support with the following information:

1) Your TP-Link ID or cloud account email address.

2) The model number and MAC address of your TP-Link Camera.

3) The model number of your Wi-Fi router.

4) Whether you have tried all the suggestions listed above or not. If yes, what were the results?