Google Home

If you’ve opened the Google Home app in the past few weeks, you’ve probably been greeted with an “offline” status for your lights. Google is finally acknowledging the problem, with a fix coming eventually.

The Google Home app is expanding what you can do with automations, with a new update adding support for more automation triggers and actions including robot vacuums.

IKEA took to CES for the first time ever this year in an effort to show off its new smart home tech, which continues to get better and better, but there’s one big asterisk for Google Home users based on early user impressions.

Uncovered LED strips have become a thing of the past as more natural and vibrant lighting options come out, like Govee’s Floor Lamp 3 and ceiling lights that mimic sunlight and provide a canvas for art.

The latest Gemini for Home updates are focused on camera improvements for Nest and other compatible devices. 

Google only kicked off its Gemini for Home rollout a few weeks ago, but it’s full steam ahead for the company’s efforts to replace Assistant. After speeding up invites in the US last week, we’re now seeing our first international expansion of the program.

The Google Home app is adding support for transferring all of your old Nest gear to the new app with a single tap, instead of repeating the process over and over again.

Over the last few weeks of staggered rollouts, some users have gained access to Gemini for Home, which adds Google’s AI assistant to existing Nest devices. The upgrade seems to be breaking some automations, though.

In addition to their ADT partnership (and investment), Google is working with AT&T on its new Connected Life security system.

After kicking off the rollout a few weeks ago, Google says the Gemini for Home replacement of Assistant on smart speakers is now available within a day of opting in, at least for those in the US who can access it.

IKEA has announced over 20 new Matter-connected smart home products coming to market soon.

In a somewhat unexpected turn of events, Google’s big Gemini for Home voice assistant update doesn’t just work on Nest devices, but several third-party Google Assistant speakers too!

Just over a month after launching an early access program, Gemini for Google Home is coming to a new wave of users in the latest rollout.

The beauty of Google Home is that it mixes together a lot of great smart home tech into one app, but there’s always been a clear disconnect in cameras. If you have a Nest camera and another brand, for instance, the Nest camera is always going to work better. That’s why the reveal of Google’s partnership with Walmart for affordable smart home hardware was pretty exciting, and why the discounts have been irresistible.

Google has shown a lot of love to older Nest products recently in terms of adding new features, but users of older first-generation Nest Cams have been left with an issue that leaves the cameras offline in the Google Home app, with no clear way to fix it.

The Gemini for Home voice assistant started rolling out at the end of October, with Early Access availability currently quite limited. A trick today does not enable the new LLM-powered assistant, but does give you access to the new Gemini voices.

The latest edition of the Google Home releases notes today are not tied to a specific version of the app, and focus on Gemini for Home improvements.

I’m not really a huge fan of modern AI. For the past couple of years, it’s just been shoved into everything online, and usually not for the better. Google, though, has really hit its stride lately in finding incredible, out-of-the-box ways to use AI to just make things better, and there are a couple of key examples of this.