Hive has begun to email customers to remind them that the Hub 360 is about to lose the ability to detect specific sounds - and it's happening soon.

The Hive Hub 360 can currently detect when certain sounds occur in your home, like breaking glass or a dog barking for example. But the company has started to email existing customers to warn them that the sound detection feature is going away as of 5 January, 2023. Once it's gone, the sound detection features won't be available for those who have their Hive Hub 360 up and running at home.

Hive is of course quick to remind everyone that all of the Hub 360's other features will remain unaffected despite the loss of sound detection, but that's likely to be scant consolation for those who relied on the feature to this point.

As for why this is happening, Hive simply says that it's "got big plans to make Britain’s homes more energy efficient and cheaper to run". It goes on to say that it's discontinuing smart security products and features to allow it to "concentrate on developing more smart home tech that’ll get us closer to Net Zero".

That's a noble course to be sure, but nobody likes to lose features that are already working especially if they were key drivers behind picking up a piece of hardware in the first place.

"Don’t worry, everything else will work as normal. It’ll just no longer alert you of sounds around your home," Hive says.