Has your Google smart speaker been giving you the silent treatment lately? Join the club.
Over the past several days, owners of Google’s Nest and Nest Hub devices have been reporting that Google Assistant has stopped responding to basic commands such as “What’s the weather” and “What time is it?”
Perplexed Nest users had been turning to Google’s support team for possible solutions, but with little success. Luckily, Google just told Android Authority that it’s deployed a fix and that “all users should be up and running now.”
The problems appear to have begun earlier this week, with Nest users on Reddit and other forums complaining that their smart speakers were going silent when asked the most basic commands.
“It will just loop its little lights for 15-20 seconds and then flash and do nothing,” one Nest user wrote on the Google Home subreddit. “I’ve tried factory resetting [the speaker] twice but no luck.”
The bug affected a variety of Nest speakers and displays, including the Nest Mini, Nest Audio, Nest Hub, and Hub Max.
Strangely, many users Nest (including those at Android Authority) said the speakers did respond to smart home commands as well as music playback requests. But for more basic tasks–such as asking for the weather or the current time–no dice.
Personally, I hadn’t noticed the issue at all with my Nest Hub or Nest Hub Mini, although I hadn’t been actively testing them in the past few days, either. I tried both Nest Hub displays and my Nest Audio this morning, and all of them responded promptly to my weather and time inquiries.
In its message to Android Authority, Google said it was “still investigating the root cause” of the bug.
But it’s worth noting that Google has begun testing its Gemini AI model on certain Nest devices, with the LLM handling the answers for more in-depth questions while allowing Google Assistant to handle more basic tasks.
Author: Ben Patterson, Senior Writer, TechHive
Ben has been writing about technology and consumer electronics for more than 20 years. A PCWorld contributor since 2014, Ben joined TechHive in 2019, where he has covered everything from smart speakers and soundbars to smart lights and security cameras. Ben's articles have also appeared in PC Magazine, TIME, Wired, CNET, Men's Fitness, Mobile Magazine, and more. Ben holds a master's degree in English literature.