Advice on Fan setting (auto vs on vs schedule)

I previously had a dumb thermostat and did this every day: - heat off and fan to auto when I left home - heat on and fan to 'on' when I got home

We leave our fan (blower) running continuously while we are home to balance the temperatures, and to take advantage of air filtration.

I recently purchased a nest thermostat which insanely enough does not have the on/auto feature, but rather has auto/countdown/schedule instead. So I either need to shift my behaviour or return the damn thing. Here is my question:

Assuming that I am home 12 hours during the day and away 12 hours during the day, my fan is running at 50%. Would I achieve the same filtration and balancing results if rather than using on/auto, I set the fan to run for 30 or 20 or 15 minutes every hour during the day (or during the night when it's more important to keep the air fresh in the bedroom and temperatures equalized).

The nest Reddit channel is a ghost town so I've posted this here. I want my fan running MORE than just when the heat is activated, but not when I'm away from home regardless of having a fan schedule set. Unfortunately nest doesn't have that flexibility. But as long as I can come up with a plan that in a 24 hour period my fan isn't running more than it would have previously with my dumb thermostat (thus not costing me more to operate) and I'm still getting a reasonably similar comfort level from having the fan run more often (temperature balance and air filtration) maybe this kinda crappy thermostat is worth keeping.

FYI I have a single stage forced air natural gas furnace, heating 3 level single family home.

Thanks in advance.

FYI 2 I'm aware that if I turn the thermostat to OFF the fan schedule will not run, however I don't like this option because I can't use IFTTT to increase the temperature when I get home and reduce it when I leave home when it is set to OFF. It's pointless to do this manually with a $300 thermostat.

submitted by /u/speedream
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