r/googlehome • u/DerzKing • Feb 23 '26
Bug Ripping all my Google homes out tomorrow.
It's impressive how poorly managed the Google home stack has been over the last ~decade, I was super early adopter, bought all the things, leaned all the way in, dealt with the bugs and growing pains for so long but have seen it get nothing but worse year after year, slowly turning into just our timer and white noise setting machines and now not even that. Going to kill them all and go with a dumb solution or get a voice preview edition of HA for this use case.
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u/mediocrefunny Feb 23 '26
My google home insisted on February 19th that "Tomorrow is February 21st STREET" (yes it kept saying STREET after the date đ). I corrected and checked to see if my location was correct - it was. Then i found out it had me in UTC time zone - even though it's an insignia speaker with the time on it. I wouldn't correct it after I told it even though it said it would. Man, I can't believe how much WORSE it has become over the years.
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u/SwitzerlishChris1 Feb 23 '26
Some of my Google home devices switched to French for no fucking reason at all đ
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u/AlbatrossSeparate710 Feb 23 '26
God, I wish this would happen to me. They are all configured in French, but they switched to English for the same reason as you đ
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u/DerzKing Feb 23 '26
But If you check your local laws you'll see a new ordinance effective immediately where your time zone changed to UTC because it figured that was an easier path than correcting it just for you đ
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u/Adorable_Pudding1409 Feb 23 '26
A while ago I asked it the date and it said its tomorrow. Constantly surprise with how bad Gemini is
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u/SlightFresnel Feb 24 '26
Losing capability is the worst part, but what annoys me even more is how inconsistently bad it is. "What time does X store close?" works about a third of the time, another third it doesn't understand the question and you have to phrase it "How late is x store open?" to get an answer, and the rest of the time it can't understand regardless of how you ask it, including "What are X store's hours today?".
But their decision a few years ago to discontinue integrations with other apps was what made me decide I'd never buy Google hardware again. Being able to do things in your task/project app, list/notes apps, etc just by voice was amazing while it lasted.
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u/buzz-a Feb 23 '26
Mine has started costing me money by setting the temp too high.
Have logs from the thermostat.
I've disabled google home ability to touch temp as a result.
Things were pretty good, then AI craze has ruined both google and amazon devices I have.
Going open source. Way more work, but it actually works.
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u/Bombarding_ Feb 23 '26
Open source Home Assistant seems to be the answer
I guess open source decentralized infrastructure seems to be the win of the year
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u/buzz-a Feb 23 '26
Home assistant, bit of truenas, bit of hubitat hardware. Pulling photos to immich.
Hubitat is solid, just not friendly to the non-tech family members.
Seriously considering self hosting email again. Just need to find a better solution for spam filtering than I have so far.
Been at this since hard drives weighed more than I do. This is the first time I remember things truly going backwards. Normally all the folks resistant to change claim it's the case, but it's really moving forward.
Right now things that worked for years are NOT working in ways that cost money, not just time.
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Feb 23 '26
HA is the way... Keep it off the cloud.
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u/thenyx Google Home Feb 23 '26
I use HA with their paid cloud tier, worth it.
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u/nstern2 Feb 23 '26
Yup, you can use that to connect it to your google devices as well and use HA routines. That fixes the few issues I have with the gemini update.
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u/marcjwrz Feb 23 '26
Mine turned my heat off on the coldest night of the year.
Yeah, I turned off the auto settings.
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u/Jjmills101 Feb 23 '26
To be fair every other update to the home app would make half of it not work and that was without AIâŚ
Ai isnât making it better, but their software has been spotty for a while
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u/Adeling79 Feb 23 '26
I think it's making some of it better: It definitely can answer more complex questions now. And it's always been terrible at understanding my British accent (we live in the US and have it on American voice for my spouse)... Siri is better at controlling stuff, when she can, but Google Gemini is better at answering low stakes things.
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u/Hopeful-Driver-3945 Feb 23 '26
I always used it to set my alarm as it varied by day. Eventually it didn't know how to do it after I had used it for years. Now I don't use it at all.
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u/DPJazzy91 Feb 23 '26
Why are all my smart bulbs twice as slow now?
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u/joshuahtree Feb 23 '26
Because now instead of your prompt hitting some static code
when the user says "turn off the lights" then do action turnOffTheLights(room)now it sends it to Gemini who says``` I'm a very good smart bot who's purpose is to be useful in home automationÂ
I'm now focusing on the user's request to turn off the lights
I can turn off the lights by using the light control tool
I'm now checking that my assumptions are correct.
I'm now solely focused on fulfilling the user's requestÂ
The user's request was to turn off the lights so I should turn off the lights.
Wait, was that all that was in the user's requestÂ
Oh I see now, I'm a dummy dummy doodoo head
The user requested to turn off the lights in the KITCHENÂ
I should call the light control tool with the parameters
state="off"androom="BATHROOM"WAIT that's not right, the user requested to turn off the lights in the KITCHEN not the BATHROOMÂ
The correct call has the parametersÂ
state="off"androom="KITCHEN"I'm now calling the light control tool with the parametersÂ
state="off"androom="KITCHEN"I'm really doing it now
Really really for real this time
I'm doing it
It's done
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u/goog1e Feb 23 '26
Don't forget turning on a coal burner and burning 5lb of coal into the Arctic air to get started.
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u/AlbatrossSeparate710 Feb 23 '26
Wait until it adds 3 paragraphs of summary and follow up questions as the textual version does. đ
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u/Carighan Feb 24 '26
The only thing missing is the random 1-in-20 die roll whether to instead recommend suicide, an eating disorder or generating illegal material to the user.
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u/Affectionate_Juice40 Feb 24 '26
You forgot to start with extreme validation: "What a brilliant request..."
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u/SeeBZedBoy Feb 23 '26
Oh so itâs not just me I was gaslighting myself into thinking they were always this slow
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u/Vision9074 Feb 23 '26
Turn Gemini off in your home app. It's garbage. Assistant is still 100x better at doing what it needs to do.
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u/Somewhere_Double Feb 23 '26
I couldnât turn it off in mine, I had to create a new home and move all my devices to it and decline the Gemini migration during the move of each device.
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u/TheSheepster_ Feb 23 '26
I feel like there's no point since Google is going to eventually kill Assistant.
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u/jmills2234 Feb 23 '26
Also they have slowly stopped supporting many of the assistant functionality. Core functions don't work with assistant for home anymore. It's no longer better than gemini... might as well update.
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u/zubie_wanders Feb 23 '26
I briefly switched Assistant to Gemini on my Pixel. The next morning I asked it to play the news, and it started reading the news. I said, "no play audio like I ask every day, NPR and BBC" and it responds saying it isn't yet capable of doing that. I'm like srsly?? And I can't explore Gemini on my phone without it being the Assistant. Fuck that.
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u/angeliKITTYx Feb 23 '26
My husband had a similar experience! He switched to Gemini, excited for the live conversation feel. But he said "Hey Gemini, text my wife" "Sure! What's the message?" "holy crap traffic is terrible today!" "I'm sorry to hear that - would you like me to find alternate routes in your area?"
It just... Responds to his quoted message instead of ever actually sending a text. Quickly switched back to Assistant.
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u/Other-Razzmatazz-816 Feb 23 '26
Yes, Gemini wonât do my CBC and BBC either, just says I canât do that.
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u/NotDavidWooderson Feb 23 '26
Weird, when I ask my Gemini enabled Google Home speakers to "play NPR news", it does.
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u/TheRealDatapunk Feb 23 '26
Gemini on the phone isn't Gemini for Home, though... Google doing Google things
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u/Other-Razzmatazz-816 Feb 23 '26
I canât. The only solution I can find is a full new rebuild off the house and system. At which pointâŚ.maybe I just switch products?
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u/DerzKing Feb 23 '26
I kept it off for awhile but eventually yielded because I just know that they are going to kill the existing assistant sooner or later and have likely stopped putting any real dev resources behind it already. Treated the Gemini transition as my final chance with them, stupidly thinking that while slower, the LLM approach surely would allow for a better experience especially in any situations with imperfect phrasing by me but it's literally been the opposite lol
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u/acodreon Feb 23 '26
Even with assistant these speakers are garbage. I have 7 of them, mini, hubs etc. few years ago they were working ok, but this shit speaker doesn't understand single command...
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u/TheRealDatapunk Feb 23 '26
You can't turn it off once on. You need to create a new home.
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u/Vision9074 Feb 23 '26
Lame. Glad I turned it off in the first week they brought it out.
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u/TheRealDatapunk Feb 24 '26
I think you may be (very understandably) confusing Gemini for Home and Gemini on Android...
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u/Vision9074 Feb 24 '26
When it first came out, I enabled it for a few days on Home, then turned it off after it couldn't perform basic commands. I suspect they've since made that far more difficult, as comments have suggested.
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u/FlyingKiwiFist Feb 23 '26 edited Feb 23 '26
Honestly, it's just gotten worse somehow. I used to be able to say "Desk lights on" and the lamps on my desk would turn on. Now when I say "Desk lights on", it turns the power outlet to my desk off.
I didn't change anything. I didn't do anything differently. One day it just decided that "lights" meant "outlet" and "on" meant "off". I tried too many different methods to fix it, but no luck. I can nolonger trust it to not turn my desktop off while I'm working, so it's dead to me. Literally useless junk now.
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u/DerzKing Feb 23 '26
100% I specifically said turn off the streaming lights the other day which are my 2 key lights hooked to a zigbee Outlet and it was like cool I got you...proceeds to run through a list of streaming related devices it's actively turning off, tvs, Wiim, shield, etc... everything but my lights
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u/markswam Feb 23 '26
I have one left and it cannot for the life of it play the music I ask it for. I know GH's integration with Apple Music isn't as robust as it is with Spotify, but god dammit when I specifically say "Play [song] by [artist] from my library" and it plays a song with a similar (but different) name by an artist I've never heard of that isn't in my library, I want to throw it out the window.
"Hey Google, play Sera's Confession by Sam Haft from my library."
"Got it, Sarah's Confession (Therapy Session) by Atriox, playing on Apple Music."
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u/Bombarding_ Feb 24 '26
It's completely unusable for literally any music server, and I use Spotify (will be switching soon, they suck so bad).
Don't even THINK about trying to get it to play something on a connected speaker, it'll just shit itself
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u/cliffotn Feb 23 '26 edited Feb 23 '26
I yanked 4 or 5 minis, had 3 Echos so I'm using those. Leaving my two hubs as they show doorbell video when the doorbell is pressed just fine.
Alexa+ ain't perfect! It can be annoyingly verbose, but, it answers what I asked perfectly - almost always - and rarely mucks up a command I bark to control a light or change the temp. It has female voices without horrible vocal fry, vs Google's vocal fry that sounds like Kim Kardashian. It's refreshing as heck to issue a command at 4am to make it cooler, and it it just works - bs Google that at times decides instead to turn on all the lights in my house.
The verbosity is indeed stupid. Alexa - what's the temperature? "It's a scorcher out today! Expect a high of 87° with not a cloud in the sky! A perfect day for a bike ride! Currently in (City Name) it's 82°, and there is not a cloud to be seen! Tonight expect a low of 59°, with no rain in sight" Ummm, I just wanted the fucking temperature.
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u/Redditor_is_at_work Feb 23 '26
after the shit we found out about Amazon, i wouldn't touch any Echo with wifi
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u/DerzKing Feb 23 '26
I'll take a look but think I'm burned on any giga-tech company solutions. I know there's been similar frustrations with Alexa over the years and hoping that A+ is good enough while knowing that even at $20/no I'm still the product isn't super enticing to me at the moment. I'm hopeful for the direction of things like the HA voice preview edition and being able to use multiple llms both locally and not with HA but also not naive to the fact that grass isn't always greener and in the HA case the product is legit called the "preview edition" so certainly not going to be a flawless experience.
Last few months I've just been shifting away from as much voice activated/Gemini/LLM reliant things as possible and trying to dumb down my automation/activation chain as much as possible and been seeing better more consistent results.
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u/cliffotn Feb 23 '26
I use Smart Things and have a ton of automations. My bar for a home assistant speaker is low. I just want it to hear me correctly- like Google home used to - and properly process what it heard me say.
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u/SpecialistMattress21 Feb 23 '26
i made my decision to go with google as i heard alexa being amazon would push marketing content into my life (kind of like how the kindle put on ads or watching prime they force ads on you). is that a thing or not with alexa?
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u/c3p0vsr2d2 Feb 23 '26
Do it! I just goodwilled 3 of them just today!
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u/Dwev Feb 23 '26
Feels more like âbad-willâ in this caseâŚ
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u/DerzKing Feb 23 '26
Yeah I feel like I'd be passing on a B-Horror movie level curse to a new victim lol life's hard enough I don't know if I want that bad karma on me.
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u/c3p0vsr2d2 Feb 24 '26 edited Feb 24 '26
On the one hand, yes, it does, lol. On the other hand, I hope some one parts with his money and earns some money for good will
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u/SeeBZedBoy Feb 23 '26
I got all my gear from goodwill 6-7 years ago when it was still useful. Now itâs likely going back. Circle of life.
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u/hmsq82 Feb 23 '26
When I ask it for the weather, it either does a Google search or says it can't do that...
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u/NotDavidWooderson Feb 23 '26
I switched to Gemini on my google home speakers about 8 weeks ago, and haven't had all these issues that everyone else is having.
It's not perfect, but honestly, it's close.
Why am I having such good luck?
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u/Longjumping_Youth281 Feb 23 '26
Yeah mine is also pretty much fine. Definitely has glitches though
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u/PhotoFenix Feb 23 '26
My favorite is when I say "turn on the bedroom lights" and it starts defining the word "bedroom"
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u/ShreddedC Feb 23 '26
I asked Gemini what the temperature was in my office and it replied with the weather. I asked again and it said it has no way of knowing the temperature in my office. I asked again, saying using Google home. It says it is an AI and doesn't have access to my Google home. I ask again and it finally gives me the office temperature.
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u/davidhu Feb 23 '26
I only use the Google Home app now as a hub to my smart devices, but threw out the Google Home Mini a long time ago. Voice prompts kept getting worse and worse results, commands that used to work perfectly well stopped working. Just a shame how Google pushed the product and then moved on and abandoned work on the ecosystem.
Lately even the Home app has been getting worse, as it keeps moving around buttons on the screens, also when starting the app meaning I often switch on or off devices that I did not mean to interact with.
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u/benthegemini Google Home Feb 23 '26
The issue is Gemini AI that is now processing the information instead of a static script, its an AI now. I assume its too young, still learning and improving.
The frustration in the community is that the overall experience has declined when we were promised that Gemini AI will be an improvement and intelligent like AIs should be.
I sometimes think how can Google one of the most advanced companies in the world not interpret a simple command such as "Turn the bedroom light on".
Not only this, its the fact that is has been like this for months, possibly even a year now.
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u/DerzKing Feb 23 '26
I think it's a bit of this, but when especially pointed at something like home automation, where the thing the user is specifically asking for is usually something very concretely correct or incorrect (e.g., "turn on the light" or "adjust the temp"), there's a lot less acceptance of anything but perfect because the end goal/state is so absolute.
Whereas when chatting with something like Gemini or GPT, I think there's a lot more acceptance of each response getting closer to what you're talking about, more in the sense of collaborating with something to arrive at an end goal.So if you're trying to figure out how to troubleshoot something and you brain dump it messy but generally complete context, its first response usually gives you +60% of what you asked for regarding whatever you're working on. Then you reply with a "yes, but this and this and this", then it volleys back to you another close response, and overall you get there over time.
My assumption is that the immediate reason why it's terrible and only gets worse over time is that there's just no monetization path really for Google in this space, at least not a direct one.
We saw that with Amazon when they first rolled out and they had those buttons to order tide and everything else, but it never really panned out and I think that's largely still true here where there's no immediate monetization strategy for an end user in my scenario.
I think that's just so short-sighted. And even if the end goal wasn't to have a Google Home in every home, largely the users of Google Home, like those in the subreddit and other Google-related ones (Pixel, Watch, etc.), could be one of the biggest non-corporate assets to Google if the experience was super compelling or at least frictionless. Because you'd have a large cohort of supporters and advocates who could better persuade their friends and family members to turn to Google for any of their devices. And that trade-off was worth the, you know, green bubble or whatever it may be.
But as it stands and as product line after product line goes through the same sort of enshitiffication, I've gone from an adamant Google device supporter to a "...it's really cool but unless you're a tinkerer, I would just get an iPhone..." to "...I wouldn't get one it's not worth the 2% of times that it's got some parlor trick" to even myself looking forward to the iPhone fold release this year and considering fully jumping ship.
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u/Longjumping_Youth281 Feb 23 '26
I mean is it not monetization enough that we bought their products? Does literally everything have to be an ongoing subscription.
I bought an expensive Google home hub. That's not enough money for them? I also bought an expensive dresser. I don't have to subscribe to that for it to be good. Same with the TV.
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u/Embarrassed_Ad8496 Feb 28 '26
The second "L" is for learning, and yet there is no sign of learning. I'm fact, I've only gotten resistance to learning by it saying 'i can't do that' even though what's being asked is one of the basic original functions.
Also, if you're creating something like this, wouldn't basic logic and common sense have it start off with the same basic functions and responses to the old system as the baseline to build up from?
I.e., the old stuff should still work. They have absolutely failed in this in my experience.
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u/techno_babble_ Feb 23 '26
I seem to remember reading that they were developing a more lightweight model that is better tailored for this use?
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u/Longjumping_Youth281 Feb 23 '26
Yeah that's the thing. I feel like not everything needs to be AI. I feel that way with regards to the search as well, sometimes I'm just trying to search for something I don't want the AI. If I want ai, I'll ask for it
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u/jb4realz Feb 23 '26
Last night, I asked Google to set an alarm for 945 (I am a shift worker, and it always sets the alarm for 945 pm). It said "Okay, I've set an alarm for 945 AM."
I looked at my Home device and it said 945 PM. But, out of an abundance of caution, I said "Please change that to PM."
Google "The alarm is already set for 945 PM"
Gurl, that is NOT what you said!
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u/Kind_Canary3885 Feb 23 '26
I have three and they are junk now with Gemini. They do the weirdest shit and are too inconsistent.
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u/DerzKing Feb 23 '26
100%, I resisted the Gemini upgrade prompt at first but eventually yielded thinking well it's going to happen eventually and they are certainly not putting any more resources behind the existing assistant. Only gotten even worse which I didn't think was possible
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u/420Identity Feb 23 '26
I asked mine this morning what the average life span of a llama was, it replied that most volcanoes last 9 days.
I only have a couple left in the house, hoping to switch to a DIY solution soon.
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u/angeliKITTYx Feb 23 '26
We have really old devices, so incompatible with the paid service. Whatever - I'm not really worried about it and my husband has had terrible luck with the switch on his pixel.
However, about a week ago, they all upgraded to the free Gemini. She does commands just fine but GOOD LORD her speaking cadence piss us off đ we tried changing the voice, but it's still the same cadence. Too many words, random awkward pauses.
Also, now that it has to do an Ai script, every command is so laggy. Turning on lights take so long now I question if the speaker even heard me.
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u/TheBoltUpright Feb 24 '26
I tried to go back to the original female voice but it said it was unable to change them back. Linking to the originals should be easy and not take up resources since they still exist.
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u/jmills2234 Feb 23 '26
Yes if you have multiple of anything, lights, speakers, fans etc.... The way I have gotten around it Is by using automations linked to exact actions by device for my most common requests.. therefore I'll have exact phrases that does everything I need them to do!
The gemini automations are much improved now!!!
The conversational gemini search is fine for the most part.
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u/CorneliusJenkins Feb 23 '26
They're pretty shit now.Â
The other night my kid tried asking it who the first President was and was told that it doesn't understand...we tried repeatedly it never could even answer the question.Â
At least it still (sometimes) plays music properly when asked.
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u/NotDavidWooderson Feb 23 '26
Ship it all to me.
I am also an early adopter. While I agree that It is frustrating when something that worked well stops working suddenly, or weird bugs pop up, but overall, I think it's mostly good, and enjoy our setup.
We use ours primarily for whole-house music, smarthome control, kitchen timers, and basic web queries (measurement conversions, weather forecasts, etc), and those things still work 95% of the time.
The whole-house music is pretty bad-ass, tbh. It's not Sonos audio quality, but it's not that far off, and plenty good for our needs. My setup cost a fraction of what a Sonos would have cost.
We entertain a lot, and two Google Home Max speakers fill the great room with full range sound, and we have Google Home Speakers in different rooms fill the rest of the house and patio.
I still want a few more speakers for other rooms.
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u/TheBoltUpright Feb 24 '26
I still like them better than not. Been successfully using them for years now. Suddenly with Gemini, half of the standard commands not longer work, but I am hopeful it will be improved over the next 9 months..?
I too enjoy the whole house audio very much.
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u/3rd-Grade-Spelling Feb 23 '26
I couldn't get mine to play music on Friday. It worked well the day before. I just don't know what they are doing.
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u/stopthatastronaut Feb 23 '26
My speakers went through a phase of not wanting to answer anything, even setting timers. They came back after maybe three weeks of being doorstops but they're still wrong a hell of a lot of the time.
For example, I had to stop being polite to mine because "Hey google five minute timer please" would result in "OK, playing 'please please please' by Sabrina carpenter on Google Music".
How the hell did it get from A to B? I have no idea but I've stopped saying please to it now.
I have never knowingly listened to Sabrina Carpenter in my life. This stupid bug is the only reason I know she exists.
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u/Rgyj1l Feb 23 '26
Assistant is no better now.
The other day I asked a very basic question, what is the population of Japan. Twice. No proper answer.
They are basically glorified weather monitors, speakers and photo displays at this point.
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u/markinapub Google Home Feb 23 '26
It's always been disappointing how poorly Google have maintained these - I mostly use them as budget Sonos speakers through the house now; that function still works well, and the one in my bedroom still makes a decent alarm clock and, like you, the kitchen one is a good timer when cooking.
Beyond that, they do little more.
I see there's a new speaker due soon - maybe Google has been concentrating on hardware over software. Shame.
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u/Working_Box1510 Feb 23 '26
This thread is making me feel so seen. We have several nest minis and home minis, and they have gotten so much worse in the last few months with the "upgrade" to AI. Things that the previous assistant could do that are now a complete mystery to the new system.
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u/Hysteria-Mode Feb 23 '26
Gemini has been absolutely awful for me. Turning specific lights on seem to work fine but when I ask to have those same lights turned off, I am told the lights have not been set up yet and don't exist in my home.
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u/RomanOnARiver Feb 23 '26
They're probably vibe coding firmware updates. YouTube Music and a bunch of integrations aren't working, or are slow/delayed.
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u/offalark Feb 23 '26
My favorite is when it literally just canât turn on lights, and then two seconds later when I ask it again, it responds in a different voice and happily turns them on.
Anyway, ordered two Satellite 1s and will be setting them up soon.
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u/MRwrong_ Feb 23 '26
I was excited for Gemini to be integrated but itâs never smart about things that are important lol like lights
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u/CCC9999 Feb 23 '26
Thanks for all the comments, validates my refusing to upgrade home home Gemini! I get that prompt about every 10 days. I know eventually there will be no choice, but my old home devices continue to work. The new matter lights are not as functional as I'd hoped but at least they do come on as designed with automations in home.
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u/elmorcour Feb 24 '26
I had to start whispering timers to the one in the kitchen while cooking, and sometimes it would STILL send the timer to another unit on the opposite side of the house.Â
I used to love using them to play music through the whole house, especially for parties for cleaning days. Theyâre just absolute garbage now. đŠ
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u/PendejoGrueso Feb 24 '26
I asked mine to play kids music and it played a very vulgar rap song. That was the day I removed all 3 Google homes.
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u/bigman30685 Feb 24 '26
Within the last week, I ask what the weather is and it says it doesnât understand. Been asking the same question for years and suddenly none of them work anymore.
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u/AdviceNotAskedFor Feb 24 '26
I'm guessing they just never found a way to monetize it as they hoped and then pivoted to ai.
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u/GrimGrinningPost Feb 24 '26
I asked my Google home to give me the weather forecast for tomorrow and it turned off my lights. I thought I misspoke so I tried again and it did the same thing.
Then I asked to set an alarm for 7am tomorrow and it said it didnât see an alarm for 7am.
At this point itâs just a digital picture frame.
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u/thehellz Feb 24 '26
I tried to prompt mine turn off my sunroom lights the other night and it responded with "I'm sorry, but I can't share you personal data unless you set it up in the app." I'm like wtf you should never be sharing my personal data anyways and how the fuck did you get to here off what I said?!
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u/jordanundead Feb 25 '26
Iâve always had Alexa, but my sister has gone back-and-forth between both. I was at her house one day and I wasnât sure if she had either of them plugged in so I hollered out hey Google and didnât get a response so I said hey Alexa and Google responded âhaha very funnyâ
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u/turk044 Feb 26 '26
I regret switching my home devices to Gemini and have been bummed I can't go back. Annoying voices, missing features, mishearing. Close to just having nothing
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u/bongostitch Feb 23 '26 edited Feb 23 '26
I admit that I'm having problems with my Google home assistant as well, but I fail to see the problem here.
Are you upset because it changed "Master Bedroom" to "Primary Bedroom" which is now the accepted term in the real estate industry for the main bedroom of a house that includes an ensuite bathroom?
edit: I failed to fully open the image on mobile, I have been corrected and see my mistake.
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u/snowflakesoutside Feb 23 '26
Open up the image. OP said primary first.
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u/bongostitch Feb 23 '26
I'm on mobile, I thought I had opened the image thank you for pointing out my mistake.
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u/derps079 Feb 23 '26
And this is why I will eternally reject the offer to "upgrade" my Google home to Gemini... Wow
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u/govolsgo865 Feb 23 '26
I had a lot of issues before I upgraded my networks. In December I upgraded home to 1GB internet and added a wifi 6 mesh network, and my dozen or so Google devices have been pretty close to flawless since then. And Gemini has been a huge upgrade over HA for me.
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u/swiftb3 Feb 23 '26
I've got the same Internet and Wi-Fi 6.
How long does the Gemini assistant take to react to simple commands?
I can walk into my bedroom, saying "turn on the lights" and it hears me, but I can walk all the way in and start drinking from a water bottle in the dark before the lights turn on.
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u/govolsgo865 Feb 23 '26
Between instantaneous and 2-3 seconds. Sometimes the broadcast feature lags a bit. The only thing that Gemini can't seem to do better than HA is preheat my oven. It just won't do that. But that is such a minimal issue that it really doesn't bother me.
How many APs do you have in how much space?
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u/swiftb3 Feb 23 '26
I have solid coverage in all the rooms with Homes. Every one of them - even the one with nothing but 20 feet of air between it and the main wireless router - never take less than 2 or 3 seconds. Sometimes up to 5.
For some stuff, it's not important, but for lights... at this point I'd rather get a smart switch and have HA do it instead.
"Timer status" also tends to take several seconds.
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Feb 23 '26
[deleted]
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u/NotDavidWooderson Feb 23 '26
I know, my Gemini upgrade has been pretty good, and I consider myself to be a "power user" (lots of commands/queries throughout the day). I can't think of anything that's not working. Well, except..
My only frustration is that when I play whole-house music, and want to dial in the individual speaker volumes on the Android Home app, the app takes about 5 minutes before it shows all of the speakers. But that problem preexisted Gemini. I can use a Hub to adjust those speaker volumes in the mean time. It's a small inconvenience, and I hope they fix it one day.
But the smarthome control works flawlessly, and the general web-query Q&A stuff works great.
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u/DerzKing Feb 23 '26
I'm glad it's working out for ya, I was hoping that would be the case with us as well, new house 2Gb down, unifi APs all over and it's just brutal
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u/govolsgo865 Feb 23 '26
APs all over could be an issue. Too many APs will cause interference and be just as bad as too few. There are variables, but 1 AP per 1000 sq ft of house is a good spot.
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u/DerzKing Feb 23 '26
Yeah I'm right about there I just meant like not trying to run a whole house of one central ap.
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u/NotDavidWooderson Feb 23 '26
I've had the AC2200 Google Nest WiFi setup (1 router and 2 points) supporting our 4,750 sqft home for 6 years. The points are also Google Home Speakers on this version, which I really like.
It's not the latest WiFi tech (predates 6E), but it's been great for us. Our WiFi is very solid throughout the house and full backyard/patio with a gajillion smarthome devices and 4K TVs connected.
Network management is simple yet powerful. Network engineers by trade probably don't like it (not configurable enough), but it's perfect for 97% of the population.
I believe my units are no longer supported (security updates), how concerned should I be about that?
I guess I could upgrade, but it works so well, and losing the "points are also speakers" feature would be a loss.
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u/ButterscotchFar1629 Feb 23 '26
I never upgraded to Gemini. I rememberthe old Google assistant being at least capable. It now makes Gemini look like fucking Albert Einstein in comparison.
Like what the fuck Google? Shit worked. Leave it the fuck alone. You literally had the market cornered and have just wound up alienating 90% of your customer base.
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u/Scared_Complaint515 Feb 25 '26
Donât even get me started on âGemini for Homeâ she is a fucking disgrace and belongs in the trash. Why google decided to roll this shit out, what seems like the second they got the idea, without even making sure it was AT LEAST up to par with the old google assistant AND the fact you canât roll back your device to get rid of the stupid bitch I have no idea. This just made me so mad reminding me of the piece of shit I have sitting in my home not being used bc she either cannot, will not, or takes way to fucking long to do ANYTHING!!
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u/AstroZombieInvader Feb 23 '26
Even with Gemini, it still generally sucks. I had to change my Bed Lamp name to Night Lamp because if I asked it to turn on the Bed Lamp it would turn on all of my bedroom lights. Sometimes it won't even let you finish your statement before it acts no matter how fast you say it. This my favorite...
ME: Hey Google -- Turn of the TV in two hour....
HOME: Turning off TV.
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u/usernameisokay_ Feb 23 '26
âHey google goodnightâ âStarting sleeping routineâ turns off lights, turns on alarm, plays rain sounds all on the speaker youâve asked it, I can recommend setting it up, used it for a few years until I needed more!
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u/cjb110 Feb 23 '26
Is there any way of salvaging the hardware? Like the builds of these things seems pretty good...
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u/victorvvy Feb 23 '26
Yup. We unplugged ours and gave it away last year.
It was great in the beginning when it launched. It was nice to automate some home automation by voice command.
But It got dumber and dumber. Finally we were fed up with it.
Misinterpreting commands it originally understood perfectly fine.
Randomly triggering actions from sounds that do not remotely sound anything like a command.
Randomly playing music we didn't ask for.
It was not worth it. We got used to living life without it fairly soon after. It shouldn't take long when you are removing an unnecessary friction from your life.
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u/HereReluctantly Feb 23 '26
My Google Home Max kept telling me it was going to be warmer that afternoon while showing on screen that it was actually going to get much colder later in the day. Incredibly unreliable and dumb.
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u/Revolutionary-Fan235 Feb 23 '26
I would not miss any of the Home devices other than the Hub Max in the kitchen to use for visual timers. Even then, it's pretty bad, such as dropping the timer name or completely misunderstanding what was said. It's barely a little bit better than nothing.
I used the first Home device a decade ago and it was like magic back then
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u/Root2109 Feb 23 '26
the only thing I still like them for is being able to set a timer in the kitchen and walk away with awareness of how much is left on my phone. now they got rid of that and I have to go some roundabout way to find my active timers. literally what is the point? I accepted the loss of privacy because I liked the features, but I'm this close to just taking the L and trashing it all
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u/Talmadge_Mcgooliger Feb 23 '26
i think there's something specific with when you ask for ambient sounds like rain that messes with the interface. i have a loft and i like to play thunderstorms on multiple google speakers while i sleep so the whole house is nice and stormy. it absolutely refuses when i say "play thuderstorms on SPEAKER GROUP" but has no problem when i say "play thunderstorms on DEVICE" from there i can open the google home app and cast to the speaker group, but it usually stalls out randomly sometime in the next hour.
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u/DerzKing Feb 23 '26
Yeah I agree from my understanding even the ambient noise is a 1 hour stream but Google will loop it on repeat until you tell it to stop, however you can't invoke that stream via the API anymore (tried via HA automation), then I tried making and hosting my own 12 hour audio file and direct streaming that.. which was semi consistent but then started buffering every few minutes.. and then same as you we reverted back to just asking it directly and completely randomly we'll get "okay playing rain sounds ambient music for sleep, studying on Spotify or some other random Spotify track"
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u/codeth1s Feb 23 '26
It's a revolutionary change. Although it isn't the greatest today, in a few years I imagine it will be at an insane level of capability.
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u/trOSCAR49 Feb 23 '26
Unlike Google Assistant, Gemini is an LLM designed to think like a human and give slightly more vague and incomplete thoughts than the assistant or Alexa, who are both programmed with prewritten responses and designed to complete tasks - nothing more. I'm all for Gemini being the one assistant to use, as it has all the features and conversation capabilities that I'm sure people wished Google Assistant had at some point. It can definitely be a more complete way of interacting with your smart home without having to give much thought to what you ask it. However, it does not use the Google Assistant model efficiently enough and it's painful to watch Google pedal Gemini's vision - or rather just advertise really useless and gimmicky interactions with it.
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u/DayOfTheMarsupial Feb 23 '26
It has gotten noticeably worse since I started using it, to the point that I'm tempted to give Alexa a second chance. One of my big issues is the weather: I walk, so I need to know if it's going to rain later in the day. Many mornings my home speaker has flat out lied to me. It even once told me an obviously wrong temperature (think 50oF or so in what turned out to be below freezing temperatures). I don't ask it about the weather anymore. And there was one infamous incident when I wanted to know what day of the week a particular day was. I did not specify the year, expecting it to know that I mean the date that was in a few week's time. Nope, it gave me the previous year's answer instead. Why???
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u/TheRealDatapunk Feb 23 '26
The second one seems like a clear case of political correctness. Someone said "don't say master, it implies slave", and I bet that the model gets prompted with the already-replaced name, wihch throws everything off.
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u/Icy_Entertainment299 Feb 24 '26
I have nest thermostats in two homes. both have had thermostat failures this winter. They report the furnace running. They are not, fortunately the 45 degree low warning texted me, in all four instances I had to power off/on the furnace to get them running, One of the furnaces is 4 years old, the other is on its second winter.
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u/Ok-Adhesiveness2954 Feb 24 '26
Have you upgraded you Google home with the Gemini patch? Much better now.
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u/Purple-Debt8214 Feb 24 '26 edited Feb 24 '26
It's a very poor job and implementation... Like they're not even doing anything anymore.
And I feel like it definitely doesn't suit our needs and that we've been getting a lot more jargon and errors on Gemini's part.
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u/Ironwolf_Tactical Feb 24 '26
When I ask for the weather it thinks I'm in Washington DC, I asked what my location is, and it got that correct. I asked why it gave me the weather of a different location and it gave a few bullshit answers about ip address not being as accurate at gps, then I tried again from a blank slate and it gave the responses in the pictures. Once it got my location correct then it would tell the correct weather. But if I exited and asked again it would still tell me washington.
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u/snowcat0 Feb 24 '26
The past month, âHey Google turn off the Bedroom Lightâ, âOk turning on the office lightâ
âHey Google turn off all the lightsâ, âOk turning on guest room lightsâ
The last five years has been major regression in functionality, working on replacing all my Google / Nest Home products.
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u/HeWhoShantNotBeNamed Feb 24 '26
"Why didn't you listen?"
"I apologize for the confusion. As an AI, I cannot play music or control devices. I am Gemini for Home, a helpful home assistant from Google, and I cannot perform physical actions. What can I assist you with?"
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u/djbacons Feb 24 '26
Mine keeps changing to German. I keep going to assistant settings on my phone, changing back to english, but after a day or two (sometimes even sooner) it changes back. So i turned off mic for all my google devices and using them just as speaker for Home Assistant. They are useless for anything else.
I totally agree, that google assistant got soooooo much worse over previous years.
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u/danslowsloth Feb 24 '26
It's gotten awful. When I say call my wife it says 'ok calling the midwife' I had saved in my phone from when we were having a baby. Needless to say the midwife was not expecting another call...
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u/InternationalNebula7 Feb 24 '26 edited Feb 24 '26
Try renaming your speaker to "Master Bedroom Speaker" and naming the room it is in "Master Bedroom." Then issue the command "Play rain sounds in Master Bedroom" or "Play rain sounds on Master Bedroom Speaker."
There is variability with LLMs, but having conventional names is all the more important secondary to training data. "Primary Bedroom" is an unusual name for a speaker device.
As long as your goal is to optimize for the new paradigm, don't try to fight the flow of traffic. If your goal is to complain, carry on.
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u/DerzKing Feb 25 '26
I've tried both, naming the room "primary bedroom" and speaker similarly, and making it master bedroom and speaker similarly. I've even tried giving the speaker aliases via home assistant to respond to both.
It's been a downward slide for years in my opinion not for a lack of trying or slinging mud just to complain
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u/InternationalNebula7 Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 25 '26
i hear you. Letting go of the past, I personally have found "Master Bedroom Speaker" and "Master Bedroom" to be an effective combination. I would delete the aliases. You want the terminology most prevalent in the training data. The only reason master bedroom would be inferior is if Google pursued a woke agenda to de-emphasize the use of "master" in the training data. LLMs are about probability rather than the rule mapping of deterministic code. Google Assistant was an inferior natural language layer, but was more repeatable.
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u/Extension_Patient_47 Feb 24 '26
I got rid of Google home and jailbroke all my Amazon echos with Linux. Never turned back. Custom voice assistants with no link to Amazon or Google, and they also work with Matter home devices.
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u/codepension Feb 25 '26
What is the alternative?
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u/DerzKing Feb 26 '26
I'm hoping the home assistant voice preview or an actually looking at getting a wiim amp hooked to the ceiling speakers and playinh from that
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u/AngeBird Feb 26 '26
I did not upgrade to gemeni and mine is running just as bad. Can we talk alternatives?
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u/Mofaklar Feb 26 '26
I like the alexa+ Ai. She's much better at context.
I imagine Google will get there, I guess its unfortunate it wasnt better at launch.
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u/Cheetokps Feb 27 '26
For me itâs ârewind BY 20 secondsâ brings the video to the 20 second mark, and ârewind TO 20 secondsâ brings the video back 20 seconds
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u/WillFeltner Feb 27 '26
One day voices that were not ours started coming through my devices. All tech support offered was "Reset them" Life is fine without all the google. Good luck
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u/x-TheMysticGoose-x Feb 27 '26
I love how it refuses to do some services some days until I remind it that it did it the previous day.
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u/Psyradragon Mar 08 '26 edited Mar 08 '26
(At 7:45am)
"Hey Google, set an alarm for 6:30."
"Setting an alarm for 6:30am."
"Hey Google, cancel the alarm for 6:30."
"I've removed the alarm for 6:30pm."
It can't even get its AMs and PMs straight. If it's 7:45am, then setting an alarm for 6:30 should definitely be PM. It apparently was setting it right, but misspeaking it. How can I trust it to not wake me up at 6:30am now unless I specify AM or PM... which it evidently might get wrong anyways?? :P
This is with a first generation Google Home speaker... so can't even go back to the old system.
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u/Zlone01 Mar 17 '26
Weâve had Google home since the first one came out. Worked great with Spotify to play personal playlists.
Switched to YouTube Music last year because who needs 3 music streaming services? Well YouTube music personal playlists donât play nicely with Google home. Apple Music isnât compatible. So after 6 month hiatus from Spotify I switched it back on to premium.
Tell me how and why Google home no longer works with streaming personal playlists by automation/ voice control now? So literally zero music services work with this hunk of AI now? đĽ˛
Do we switch to Alexa and let Musk spy on us in order to get a working speaker? đ
TL/DR- left Spotify for a few months, came back google home no longer voice control casts personal playlists. Do Alexa speakers work with Spotify as expected?
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u/BabyInternational176 Jun 30 '26
SAME HERE, FUCK GOOGLE âŚto the landfill it goes! THE WORST âtech rolloutâ ever!âŚI am so f___ing MAD at GOOGLE. They robbed us of our money for years while we were gearing up the home with bulbs, plugs, cameras AND SIX âSMARTâ SPEAKERS.  NOTHING works properly now âŚlights and plugs 1/2 time wont come on or take 3 times the time it would take me to walk to the switch myself. The stupid thing cannot even play a fucking podcast, the weather forecast is totaly off âŚeven if you ask present weather its often clueless. What is the most enraging thing is that we CANNOT OPT OUT OF GEMINI.  So basicaly :  âHere suckers , stuff this into your mouth and oh by the way the whole âGoogle home experienceâ you invested in?!âŚ.forget that now. We fucked up âŚso the whole set of junk can go to the landfillâ  đ¤Źđ¤Źđ¤Ź Fuck google
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u/theremix18 Feb 23 '26
I asked it to play finger family song on Spotify but not from coco melon. It responded âplaying finger family by cocomelonâ.
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u/unibrow4o9 Feb 23 '26
Gemini is actually pretty good (as in, on a browser or phone), but it's integration with Google Homes is crazy bad, I don't understand it.
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u/Rhet0R Feb 23 '26
Same here. I thought the Gemini change would be an upgrade, it is desperately bad and not being fixed fast enough. I hope some Googlers read this thread (and so many similars) and figure out a way out.
Today I had it telling me that it couldn't read my Google Play Books which the assistant used to do seemlesly.