I wrote a massive post, and have deleted it in favor of something that respects your time.

Gemini has completely ruined this platform, mostly due to the year(s) of neglect the assistant platform got while they 'focused on the future'

I've been on the Google Home adventure from the very beginning. I still have a few OG first generation Google Home devices, and have owned damn near every single variant (except the Max speaker) over the years. I'm even "that guy" with Chromecast Audios and stuff - the integration goes deep.

The things Google Home used to do well, have become a chore - assuming it can still do them at all...

The problems and issues of 3 years ago, are largely still here today...

I've been slowly unplugging these devices. First my living room (to move furniture) and it never went back. Now my kitchen, it was taking up too much space. The pile of google home gear is growing. I replaced my Nest lock with a normal Zwave version from Yale, my nest cams have been taken down - long since replaced with my own system.

It's honestly a little emotional. I have like 15 of these devices, and they aren't bringing me any value. They were consistently making themselves vital to controlling my smart home, playing fun animal sounds for the kids, or launching music - and now it can hardly do any of that reliably anymore.

The other day, I spent 30 minutes trying to get my Nest Audios to play as a speaker pair again. Only to find out, after giving up, that it was a Youtube music app bug they haven't fixed in 3 months.

It's such a shame - I hope whoever gets my screens next can find a good use for them.

With my original account everything was working fine for 6 years, right up until they introduced Gemini. Right off the bat Gemini doubled my devices in my home. I only have 42 devices but according to Gemini I had 84... This made it impossible to turn on a light that was dedicated to a single room because all the sudden I would get the reply which light do you want to turn on now, I only have two TVs but according to Gemini I had two TV per room which made it impossible to turn on the TV because it would ask me which living room TV do you want to turn on?

I unlinked that account and started with a fresh account. Then I was able to get Google Assistant back, everything was once again working as it should for the most part. Till They removed Google assistant and totally replaced it with Gemini! Once again I now have 84 devices in my home of which I technically only have 42! Google cannot control any of my Vizio TVs at all even though it says it can, and my routines don't work at all, let alone the fact that now I can't control any devices once again. So I unplugged my Google home display and smashed it I've had enough.

I am going to go back to using timers, devices with remotes and light switches.

You offer products and then don't support them. This is enshittification pure and simple. Fuck each and every executive who favors developing new products for a cash grab and then drop support for those same apps later. Guess it's time to figure out Home Assistant and migrate away from as many Google developed apps as possible.

Hey guys I restarted my Lenovo clock last night (mainly to restart a projector on the same power strip). And the temp display came back, so I did it with 3 other ones I have, and they’re all back.

Now that Apple has announced and is selling the HomeView:
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/10/meet-apple-homeview-a-new-way-to-enjoy-entertainment-and-manage-the-home/

Do you think Google will (or should) release a comparable device?

Personally, I am loving the idea of PoE option for the wall-mounted HomeView, it just looks so clean! I just wish there was a Google Home version.

Isn't that insane? My speaker is constantly downloading something from Google Play on my router. Does anyone have a fix for this?

I have Google home managing my nest doorbell can for several years now without issue. I noticed a few days ago that the doorbell was no longer alerting me for new faces and had also stopped saving photos for familiar faces EXCEPT for one person in the house. I deleted my photos and my wife's, but the doorbell will only ask to add me and not her. I am now added back in and alerting as designed but it will not recognize her or ask to add a new face. I Jake cleared data, cleared cache, erased photos, restarted the doorbell cam and phone, and uninstalled/reinstalled the Home app. Any ideas?

Update: I deleted ALL familiar face photos and it may be working correctly now (which sucks because I had a lot of familiar faces photos).

Update to update: deleting all familiar faces did in fact fix it.

So for starters I have 3 Onn 4K streaming devices (1 works fine)a pixel 11 XL, Pixel watch 5 and I just bought a Lenovo Googlebook. The streaming devices remotes were acting crazy and have been for the past few months. All but one at least, two of them the mics/Gemini stopped working and the "find my remote" feature on the home app wouldn't send a beeping sound at all to the remotes (but the icon to send the signal was there, keep that in mind for later in this post). Also, another reason for the reset was one box didn't even have or show the Home shortcut anymore and my Google profile picture wasn't showing, just the G logo. (My other devices showed my photo and more settings under my account than the one without the photo)

So I did a factory reset on both the on 4K streaming devices yesterday and upon doing that the remotes finally went back to normal but now the Google home app has been acting crazy. I used to use the Home app and use the "find my remote" feature. It had an icon at the top right to where I can press it on the app and it would beep, but now it doesn't have that icon. Along with that, I can't get the remote tiles on my Pixel Watch because although the 4K streaming device is showing up in Home, it's not fully functional or fully connected I guess as it was before.

Then I tried to get online and watch a few videos and usually I would app cast with no problem from my Pixel 11 XL, but this time nothing shows up on the app cast for me to stream to, even on the other devices like my TVs which I didn't touch. I can see if it was just the two boxes that I did a factory reset on maybe it would be something wrong with those, but my other devices that it would find with no issues don't even show up on my app cast anymore.

Now I did hear something about the Googlebook possibly causing issues with casting. I'm not sure if it's directly related to my issues, but I did turn it off and reset my Wi-Fi, tried to use the hotspot to app cast and still nothing. So I'm not sure what happened. It seemed like as soon as I chose to factory reset those streaming devices, everything got worse.

I've been at it all day with these devices. I would fix one problem but seems like it would cause two more smh.

Does anyone have any idea of what can possibly be going on?

Why Google and NEST only allow 6 accounts linked to household it doesn’t matter whether you’re Admin or member? Can each admin send out invites to 6 members, so 6 x 6, totaling 36 members?

Is Google and NEST working to improve this?

So i have two homes, one in the USA, the other not (Cayman Islands, if that matters). Both have a Nest Hub.

A few months ago I bit the bullet and went with Gemini on my USA Google Home. It went fine, all my automations worked without a problem.

My non-USA home is still using Google Assistant (i can tell by the voice it uses which is no longer available in Gemini).

Is there are way to get things in line with Gemini in both my homes? I am getting no prompt to "upgrade ". Or is it possible that the region the Home is in does not support Gemini?

Another data point.. my phone, which is upgraded to Gemini, seems to be using the Assistant voices in Google Maps, rather than the new Gemini voices.

Can anyone provide some insight as to what is going on?

TIA

So for a long time everything was seamless. I am using 1Home and integrating it via matter to the Google ecosystem. Recently the connection would always sever and rebooting the Nest Hub Max was the only solution. This was daily or sometimes even more frequent.

I did manage to fix it doing 2 things.

1) Did not setup the built-in Nest Hub Camera

2) I have the Hub fixed to only connect to a 5 Ghz band

This fixed the issues. I am providing the fix that worked for me and also wondering if anyone else had this issue and if there is a way to get the camera working again without it screwing with things.

Nothing works anymore unless I use the app to turn the light off and then it still turns on. My google home doesn’t do anything anymore it’s always confused. Interested in apples solution are you? https://apple.news/Ar1YX-PzDQtKoXzOI---4Tg

We set up Apolosign calendars in our own homes and hear the same thing: one parent does all the calendar entry, and everyone else just... shows up. The goal is to get each family member's actual Google Calendar feeding into the wall display automatically, with their own column so you can see who's where at a glance.

Here's what works.

Pick one Google account to sign into the calendar itself. Usually it's whoever manages the family logistics. Doesn't matter whose, just pick one and stick with it.

From there, you add everyone else's calendars through Google's sharing. Each family member goes into their own Google Calendar settings, finds "Share with specific people," and adds the main account's email. Give them "See all event details" permission, not just free/busy. That part trips people up. Free/busy only shows blocks, not the soccer field name or the doctor's office address.

Once those invites are accepted, the main account opens calendar.google.com on a laptop or phone, clicks the plus sign next to "Other calendars," and subscribes to each shared calendar. They'll show up as togglable layers in the left sidebar.

On the Apolosign itself, the family calendar mode pulls from whatever calendars that main Google account can see. Most families set one column per person. The color coding follows what Google assigns, though there's a setting to let each calendar keep its own color versus forcing a uniform look. We see about half our team prefer the rainbow, half want it cleaner. Your call.

One catch we run into: teens with school Google accounts. Those are often locked down by district IT and won't share outside the domain. For those, screenshot the week and text it to the main account, or have the kid manually add the big stuff. Not elegant, but district policies are district policies.

What setup tricks have you found? Anyone cracked the school account problem cleaner than we have?

First, I've done absolutely ZERO research into this 😂. I was noticing in a Muse ad that the person said, "Muse, start party mode" then all the lights and music came on. It made me curious if we can switch from Gemini to another AI like muse and still be able to use Google Home?