UniFi Protect 7.3: Longer Recording History on the Same Drives, and Cabin Cameras With No Second Console

Ubiquiti shipped UniFi Protect 7.3 today, and for once the headline feature is about money rather than megapixels. Two changes matter for the homes and businesses we look after: Super Encoding plus tiered retention, which stretches how far back your cameras record on the drives you already own, and Teleport, which lets a camera at a second property record to the NVR at your main one with no console on site. It is a free software update for every UniFi Protect system, and here is what it changes.

Store more, spend less: tiered retention and Super Encoding

Until now a Protect system recorded every camera at full quality until the drives filled, then overwrote the oldest footage. The storage math was blunt: more days meant more terabytes. Version 7.3 adds two levers.

• Tiered continuous recording. You choose how much of the drive holds full-quality footage and how much holds a lower-quality copy of everything older. Recent days stay sharp; the long tail of history stays searchable instead of being thrown away.
• Super Encoding. A new encoding mode on every supported camera that Ubiquiti says cuts storage use by up to half at the same visual quality. It is a single toggle, applied system-wide.

What this means in practice: a house with eight 4K cameras and a single-drive NVR that held about two weeks can now hold roughly a month at full quality, or months more at the reduced tier. For most homeowners that is the difference between “the package was taken while we were in Mexico, and the footage is gone” and still having it.

Teleport: the cabin’s cameras, on the house’s system

This is the feature we have been asked for by name, usually by a client standing in a Heber or Kamas cabin. Until now a second property needed its own UniFi console, which meant a second system to update, a second set of drives, and a second place to look when something happened. Teleport lets supported cameras at the remote location record straight to the gateway or NVR at the main house, so one dashboard, one storage pool and one set of alerts cover both.

Two things to know before you plan around it. First, it works on supported cameras, and the list is still being published, so we will confirm your models before promising anything. Second, the remote site still needs a solid internet connection and a decent router, because the footage travels across it. The cabin that only has a fixed-wireless link will record fine but will not stream four 4K cameras in real time. For those we still recommend a small local NVR, and Teleport for the one or two exterior cameras you most want to see from home.

Time Machine on the video wall

The live video wall, which most of our commercial clients keep on a screen at the front desk or in the back office, can now scrub backward in time without leaving it. Flip the Time Machine toggle, drag the timeline, and every tile moves together. If a customer says something happened at the loading dock twenty minutes ago, the person on the desk can look without opening a separate review tool. Residentially it is a nicer way to review a day on a large wall-mounted screen, which more of our clients have in the mudroom or office than you would think.

A smarter sensor manager

Ubiquiti’s own door, motion, smoke and air-quality sensors now live in a redesigned manager with history graphs and filters. Person identification also got drag-and-drop assignment, so tidying up who the system thinks it recognizes is quicker. Both are quality-of-life changes, and worth a look if you have been ignoring the sensor tab.

There is also a native Shopify app for retailers, which we will cover separately if any of our retail clients ask for it.

What to do with this

• If we manage your UniFi system: we are applying 7.3 over the next two weeks, turning on Super Encoding, and setting the retention tiers per the note above. You will see your recording history jump, and we will tell you by how much.
• If you run your own: update the console, then visit Protect → Settings → Recording. Enable Super Encoding, watch the estimated days change, then set the high-quality share. Give it a day and check that playback still looks right on your most important cameras.
• If you have a second property: this is the moment to talk about it. We can tell you which of your cameras support Teleport and whether the cabin’s internet is up to it.
• If you’re adding cameras: the G6 Bullet, G6 180 and AI Pro are the models we stock and install on the same Protect console. We confirm Super Encoding support per model before you order.
• If you were about to buy more drives: wait a week. Turn on 7.3 first and see whether you still need them.

This is the kind of update that makes us comfortable standing behind UniFi for camera systems: the hardware you bought two years ago just got meaningfully better, free, and the company is competing on the cost of ownership rather than on new boxes.

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Shield Low Voltage designs, installs and manages UniFi Protect camera systems for homes and businesses across the Wasatch Front and Back, from Lehi to Park City. We set retention properly, and we document what we build.