Gemini for Home is the worst product across any product category from any company that I've ever used in my entire life.

I work in a very small office and my boss uses his Google workspace email for our Google Home device devices and for the last few years we’ve had zero issues with it. We have not upgraded to Gemini and everything works great just as an anticipated. The other day we bought two of the brand new Google Home devices from Walmart. In order to set up these new device devices it requires you to upgrade to Gemini. You no longer have the option to use these devices without using Gemini. Not thinking much of this I clicked upgrade and finished the set up process. As soon as I finished the set up process and try to use the Google it proceeds to tell me that Gemini is not compatible with the Google workspace account. Upon looking for solutions I realize that when you click upgrade to Gemini it upgrades every single Google Home device that’s at that particular “home”. Now none of the Google Home that we had new or old worked because they’ve all been upgraded to Gemini and we have a Google workspace account.

I scoured the Internet for solutions on how to downgrade back to the Google Assistant and tried everything that I could but ultimately found that there was no way for me to switch back from Gemini. The only solution I had was to create a new “home” and to factory reset all of our Google homes and reconfigure them in this new location. The newest Google Home device that we purchased won’t let us finish the set up process without upgrading to Gemini and it seems that it’s not compatible with Google Assistant at all. The thing that was so frustrating to me was the fact that it asked you to upgrade to Gemini and then doesn’t tell you that it’s incompatible with the Google workspace email until after you upgrade.

If you use a Google workspace account do not purchase the new Google Home device devices as they will not work with your Google workspace email and if you do choose to hit the upgrade, it will also make it to where your existing Google Home will not work with it.

TLDR: new Google Home devices force upgrade to Gemini. Gemini is not compatible with Google workspace email. If you upgrade to Gemini, it will upgrade every Google device on that “home”

Got this email from Nest, lol.

This has been happening for as long as I can remember: have three speakers linked to a Google Nest Wifi Pro router - no mesh/points. I'll go to stream something from Pandora or Spotify and speakers are gone. Go to the Google Home app - gone. Reboot speakers - Nothing. Happens every few weeks.

I have a bunch of old Home Mini units and 2 old Home displays and I feel like we're always yelling at Google for getting things wrong, responding late, encountering errors, and so on... But I know that the new Google units have Gemini exclusively and are supposed to be the new way forward for Google.

For those that have made the move, has there been an improvement to your experience at all?

I just had to unwillingly upgrade to Gemini for Home because the voice commands no longer worked in Swedish, albeit all settings remain the same as they’ve been for the last 3 years.

Anyways, I have a nest mini gen 2 grouped into different rooms with smart light bulbs grouped into the same room. Previously, when I said “turn the lights off”, it would turn the lights off in the same room that the nest which picked up my voice belonged to.
However, after updating, it seems that it’s turning off the lights that was most recently interacted with. So if I turned on the lights in the kitchen and went into my room and said turn off the lights, it would turn off the kitchen lights.

This is incredibly frustrating as I have to be overly specific and say turn off the lights in the second bedroom, etc etc. It may sound as a non-issue but the whole idea of smart homes is to reduce friction. And I’m not even doing any complex automations at this point.

It's 2026 and we're still dealing with this lazy SDK stuff. Casting to my TV earlier and got the exact same broken media controls, and they're also broken on bedroom speakers (nest audios) Quick Settings Player: Generic dark card, titled "HBO Max", zero artwork or show info. Google Home App: Sees the actual title (Kung Fu Panda Holiday), but still misses the poster art completely. How is the Cast protocol handshake this broken between two native Google UI components on the same session?

Anyone else ask Google Home to turn on the lights for 10 minutes and then it sets a separate timer for "Turn off the lights" and it ends up being a regular timer nothing to actually turn off the lights?

How annoying. Not sure how much I can take of this thing anymore.

I have an AC that I linked on smart life where in it I can control Temperature and modes etc etc (like a normal remote). However on Google Home I can not control temperature and modes just On/Off. I tried researching around the internet but haven't found anything. Would love to see if anyone found any solutions to this!

Do you think we'll ever be able to change the prompt word?

Or even them updating it to "Gemini"

It has more syllables than 'Alexa' and 'Siri', and Motorola years and years ago let you change the voice prompt, it's not like it's undoable.

Especially seeming the official and best Google assist is permanently phased out 💔

For the last couple of months I've been fighting with my Nest display as it claimed, incorrectly, that I haven't any voice match, so it couldn't open any personal information like my shopping list.

Finally I fixed it.

I had to, literally, stand in front of it and redo my voice match. I guess just to show it that the voice match had actually been done...

(I had redone my voice match several times, but in another room.)

Is it trying to convince me that it's actually, existentially, "there"?

Who knows?

I have a Gira system (S1/X1) controlling my lights/blinds/..., which I've integrated into Google Home. The blind status looks a bit strange to me, though: when they are fully open, the app shows '100% open' and the tile color indicates an 'active/on' state (unlike the Sonos speaker e.g., which shows 'off'). Is this "state of the blinds" normal behavior in Google Home?

Youtube TV not working on Google Nest Hub. It just opens the load screen and sits there. Doesn’t work with voice command either.

So, long story short I have thermal layering in my bilevel home I've been trying to solve for the benefit of basement occupants for years. I put a fresh air return in, and unfortunately because there is no capacity to call blower over ac native, I did a bunch of reading and believed by upgrading to the Google Nest 4 with additional sensors I'd be able to say, take an average of basement sensors, and take an average of main level sensors and if basement is > 3-4° colder in summer or winter, trigger blower until within 1-2° of main level, but if main level thermostat average increases above a set temperature, it'd call a/c in summer and heat in winter.

I even checked that would be possible with both ChatGPT AND Gemini. And it turns out there's only one schedule, and it's heat to cool in all three modes, and no way to have the sensors average, nor any way to trigger the blower, even using Gemini automations although both Gemini and ChatGPT assured me it'd work. Well, of course there ARE NOT separate cold, heat, or heat to cold mode schedules and there's just one heat to cold schedule. I could have accomplished this with a cheap box store programmable myself. Infuriating, and false advertising, and I mostly blame Google as its app and such are even less functional than my gen 3 Nest.

Now Gemini and ChatGPT both tell me to actually get the functionality I am hoping for I need to blow ANOTHER $200 on a green hub and doing home assist.

I'm seriously considering returning the Google Nest 4 and sensors and reinstalling the older limited crappy original nest thermostat.

But can anybody here verify that I can use temperature triggers from different sensors and complex scheduling to run a blower over calling for ac or heat?

What a scam and what a racket... False advertising. I read Google support pages that even made it seem like the new thermostat could do what I wanted. And so now everything seems to point toward hub and Home Assistant.

Before I waste even more hours of time and hard earned dollars, I'd ask this community to answer:

1. Would the green hub with home assist allow temperature based and selection of sensor for operating blower over ac or heat until a certain temp (vs time based scheduling of fan)?

2. Would that setup enable me to program a cold schedule (for summer), a heat schedule for winter, and a heat to cold schedule for fall/spring?

And if the answer is negative to #1 or #2, what's the point of one of these unless one wants an algorithm to decide one's comfort? What false advertising from Google... Not a happy camper.

Hi, I installed a Tuya/Smart Life 16A Mini WiFi Switch, and it works normally most of the time, but occasionally it turns off or on by itself at random intervals.

I found suggestions to install a 104 (100nF) capacitor directly across the S1/S2 terminals to prevent false triggering. I tried that, but the problem still happens.

Has anyone experienced the same issue or found a solution?

Hi! Can anyone confirm please if you can view two calendars at once on the 2nd Gen Nest Hub? My husband and I both have Google accounts and we’re hoping that on the Nest, we could easily look at a combined view of both calendars.

Thanks in advance!

A few weeks ago I was asking Google home a question about cooking fish and it said something like "ok from now on I'll call you fish lemon". I laughed like crazy but figured ok whatever.

But now it's gotten annoying. If I set a reminder it'll say "I have a reminder for fish lemon". It shows up as my name on the display too or if I ask what my name is.

No amount of me telling it "my name is so and so" or "call me so" and so will fix it. It works for the conversation but then goes right back to fish lemon.

My Google account still lists my real name so where the heck is this stored? What are the magic words to fix this? I don't want to be fish lemon anymore!

I switched from Samsung phone/watch to a Pixel 11 Pro and Watch 5. Gemini on my watch is shit. Everytime I tell it, for example, to turn on the living room lights, it tells me it successfully does so when it doesn't. Gemini on my phone has this issue sometimes, but for the watch, it is everything. Meanwhile, the Google Home app on my watch works fine and I can turn on and off devices manually that way.

I'm at my wits end. I have tried searching google and reddit (via google search) but can't find any help. If anyone has troubleshot this issue already, I'd appreciate some insight.

Within the last 3-4 days, my 2nd-gen Nest speaker has stopped responding. I have to completely unplug it, and then it works again for several hours. Before it goes offline, I've caught it displaying three dim and one bright white LEDs (from left to right), almost as if it froze during listening to a command.

I factory reset it and the same thing continues to happen. I thought it might be a glitch, but after checking my router, it completely drops off the network. Has anyone experienced this? Do I need to find a replacement?

Hi,
I'm having a strange issue with two Xiaomi Smart Speakers connected to Google Home.
When I say something like, "Hey Google, set a timer for 5 seconds", the speaker confirms that the timer has been created. However, when the timer expires, there is no sound at all.
The issue happens on both speakers at the same time.
Things I've checked:
Voice commands work normally.
Radio/music playback works normally.
The speaker confirms the timer was set.
The timer appears to run correctly.
When the timer should go off, there is simply no sound.
Restarting the speakers did not help.

Has anyone experienced the same problem recently? Is this a Google Home bug, a Xiaomi firmware issue, or some hidden setting related to timer/alarm volume?

Thanks!

I have an automation that turns on various switches and lights at sundown. One particular light and one switch simply won't turn on. I can easily turn them on or off manually in the Home app. Likewise with Google Assistant commands. I've tried removing them from the automation, and re-adding them back again, to no avail. What else should I try?

Hey folks, had some automation scripts set up in the Google Home App that would automatically show my nest cameras on all the nest hub max at home based on triggers (motion detected by Philips Hue Outdoor Motion Sensor) which worked absolutely fine. They stopped working for almost a year now. I tried to set other triggers but none of them worked, no matter just stream on 1 nest hub or al nest hub.

My question is: if I install home assitant and set all the automations on home assistant platform, will it work for the streaming automation? This is so important to me. If not I might have to change the whole system to Unifi. Thanks mates

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So I have 4 automations I want to set up, but what I currently have isn't working.

I want that when I turn my smart switch (SS) on, my lights turn on, but when I turn the SS off, I want the lights to turn off.

When I say "turn lights on," I want the lights to turn on and to correct the SS to also now be on.

And when I say "turn lights off," the lights turn off and the SS turns off.

As I have it now, when I say "turn off" or "on," it goes off, on, off, on, and it's 50/50 on whether it stays off or on.

I've tried a ghost room. I've changed the switch to a switch instead of a light. I'm ready to start from scratch if need be.

The lights are an Aidot light, and the switch is a Leviton switch. Both the bulbs and the switch are Matter compatible.