Latest news with #smartHome
Android Authority
5 hours ago
- Android Authority
I ditched Google Home years ago, so why are you still using it in 2025?
Lil Katz / Android Authority 🗣️ This is an open thread. We want to hear from you! Share your thoughts in the comments and vote in the poll below — your take might be featured in a future roundup. It wasn't that long ago that Google Home seemed like the smart home platform to be invested in. Google Assistant had numerous advantages over Amazon Alexa, Google's smart home hardware was among the best on the market, and unique third-party options from Lenovo and JBL kept things interesting. But fast forward to 2025, and Google Home is a shell of its former self. Google killed third-party smart speakers/displays, the company's own hardware ambitions have all but stalled out, and the Google Home app is — to put it nicely — a mess. This recently came to light in a Reddit thread on r/GoogleHome, where current Google Home users expressed their mounting frustration with the platform. Complaints range from Google's smart speakers being unable to understand people's commands to slow/delayed responses, as well as routines not working as expected. As a former Google Home user myself, I can, unfortunately, sympathize with all of this. Google Home was the smart home platform I used for my first couple of apartments, and between 2016 and about 2019, things were great. The original Google Home speaker and Google Home Hub remain some of my favorite pieces of smart home hardware. The wood-backed Lenovo Smart Display was a staple in my kitchen, and Google Assistant, along with the Google Home app, were as reliable as I could ask for. But at some point, things began to take a noticeable turn for the worse. My speakers started failing to hear my 'OK Google' commands and would often misinterpret what I said to them. Asking Google Assistant to turn a smart light on/off often resulted in an error message, the Assistant forgot room names I had set up, etc. There wasn't a single day or instance where everything broke, but over time, things deteriorated to the point where I decided to replace all my Google Home speakers and displays with Amazon Alexa ones. Rita El Khoury / Android Authority While I reached my breaking point with Google Home, it's apparent that many people are still suffering through it, and that makes me curious — why? If you're still using Google Home in 2025, I'd love to know why you've stuck with the platform as long as you have. Is it an issue of sunk-cost fallacy? Is your Google Home experience not as bad as other people's? Do you use your smart speakers infrequently enough that you can live with a few bugs here and there? Why are you still using Google Home in 2025? 618 votes I've invested too much time/money into it. 69 % The bugs and glitches don't bother me that much. 16 % My experience has been seamless and bug-free. 8 % Other (let us know in the comments). 6 % No matter how long you've been a Google Home user and wherever you find yourself — completely fed up with the platform or happy to continue with it — I'd love to hear from you, from one former Google Home user to another. Vote in the poll above and sound off with more thoughts in the comments below, and let's keep the conversation going there.
Android Authority
a day ago
- Android Authority
I continue to use Google Home and its speakers, but I hate everything about it
I've been in the Google Home camp since the first speaker launched in November of 2016, though you might even say that I started earlier, with the first Chromecast in 2013. Since then, I've had a couple of Lenovo Smart Displays, some JBL Link speakers, the JBL Link View, the Google Home Mini, Nest Audio, Nest Hub, and many others that are too esoteric to remember. Today, my home houses two Nest Audios, a Pixel Tablet, and a Nest Hub, scattered across three floors, and even though I'm at the end of my patience rope with all of them, I still use them every day. I don't think I'm alone in this contradictory state. Every week I run across a Reddit thread of frustrated users reporting new bugs and issues, or voicing their impatience at the state of Google's smart home. And I nod in agreement, again and again, because I am them. They are me. We're all in this unhealthy relationship with Google's smart home platform together. And we can't escape. Why are you still using Google Home in 2025? 0 votes I've invested too much time/money into it. NaN % The bugs and glitches don't bother me that much. NaN % My experience has been seamless and bug-free. NaN % Other (let us know in the comments). NaN % What annoys me about my Google smart speakers, every day C. Scott Brown / Android Authority If I had a penny for every time my Google speakers and hubs… plain out refused to hear me, misunderstood what I said, decided this is not my own voice, forgot that they can control a specific device, forgot that they can execute a certain command on a device, forgot my entire routine and the keyword that triggers it, decided to tell me a long story instead of giving a short answer, told me they're executing a command and then failed to do it, took forever to do something, or answered on the furthest speaker away despite me being literally in front of another one, … well, then I'd be a millionnaire. Not a day goes by without my Nest speaker, hub, or Pixel tablet failing at some point. It's so frequent that I'm desensitized to it now; I try again and insist as if it's normal for tech to fail this frequently before getting it right. Or, if I'm in a hurry, I grab my phone to tap a button, manually, bypassing the entire raison d'être of a smart speaker. My Google smart speakers are useless, on average, about half the time I try to use them. 'Hey Google, I'm cooking,' is a routine I use every day to trigger all three air purifiers in my home and set them to the highest fan speed. Google understands me one time out of three when I say those simple words. My husband is luckier; Google gets him about four out of five times. So I've resorted to asking my husband to tell Google to start the routine because I'm tired of hearing nothing but silence. On the other hand, 'Set a chicken timer' sets a normal timer for my husband, but does the whole chicken animation when I ask for it, which irritates my husband. He wants the animation and sounds, too. For several weeks, 'Set a 20-minute timer' would open the French 20minutes news website. Anytime my husband says, 'Nothing,' the speakers answer him with the Wikipedia page of the Nothing phone company. When I play music on the ground floor, which is supposed to include both my Nest Hub and my Samsung Soundbar, the music is out of sync half the time; the other half, Google says it'll play music on my speaker group and then tells me 'Something went wrong, try again later.' Talking to this so-called smart speaker feels dumber than chatting with the snail chilling on my wet porch now. The one thing it excels at is telling me and my husband the weather, and even then, it switches to Fahrenheit every few weeks even though we've repeatedly set it and told it and insisted to get it in Celsius. 'Something went wrong, try again later,' is the soundtrack of my life. When a timer goes off in one room and I'm in another, I have to shout and hope the other speaker hears me: 'Stop' doesn't do anything on the speaker near me; it might even confuse Google because 'Nothing is playing right now.' How can it not understand that I'm stopping the timer in the other room baffles me. Plus, because I use Gemini on my phone, multiple calendar support has been kaput for me for several months now. I can have the busiest day with work and family engagements, but my Nest Audio will tell me my calendar is free because none of these are on my personal account. And don't get me started on how atrociously limited the Pixel Tablet is in a multi-user house. It only supports one voice — mine — so my husband can never ask it for his events, his shopping list, his music, or his reminders. We've relegated it to my office so he doesn't throw it out the window after the millionth, 'I'm sorry, I can't do that yet.' I've tried enrolling in Google Home previews and leaving them, updating my speakers and resetting them, improving my router and home connection, as well as every other trick in the book to no avail. My Google smart speakers are useless, on average, about half the time I try to use them. The Google Home app got better, but is still very frustrating Rita El Khoury / Android Authority It's been 18 months since I wrote an article praising the Google Home app, saying it's on the right path. Sadly, not much has changed since, and even though I love the ubiquitous smart home panel, there's so much that annoys me every day about this app. The biggest example for me is how the Google Home app becomes less useful the more devices you have. Scrolling endlessly through large similar icons becomes a waste of time, and I'm tired of having my rooms sorted alphabetically without any custom sorting. I don't want to see the bathroom lights before the bedroom or living room. I don't want to see my motion sensors take up a large tile like every other light or thermostat either, so why can't I hide them? I've set up my Favorites to create a semblance of a custom panel, but even then, why can't I make smaller tiles for the devices I use less often? Support for third-party cameras is still abysmal, too. I have two TP-Link cameras that are compatible with Google Home, but they don't show their live feed in the app or on the home panel of my Google TV Streamer. Why? Because Google still chooses a few partner companies to elevate to a status similar to the Nest Cams, while the others are left in nowhere land. And then, there are the routines. In an ideal world, I'd be able to set those up so I rarely, if ever, speak to Google Assistant, letting my home react to certain conditions and situations by itself without any voice commands. In reality, I've been able to create a few routines, but not nearly as many as I would've liked. For instance, Home and Away routines are restricted to light controls only. Why can't I turn off my TV or change the thermostat's mode when I leave home? Why can I not turn on the A/C when I get back home? I don't know. My air purifier supports all these modes But not in custom routines So I work around that by writing voice commands Custom routines are a bit more powerful, but still lack so many options. For example, I can control my air purifier's mode and fan speed in the Google Home app, but when I build a routine, I can only turn it on or off. Additionally, I can see several air quality metrics from my Sensibo Elements in the Google Home app, but I can't create a routine that turns on the air purifier each time the TVOC or CO2 levels are high; that data just doesn't appear in the 'if' part of the routine creation. The only way to bypass these is to use the code editor, and even then, the results have been hit-or-miss for me. And to make my Pixel Tablet play music when I turn on my office light, I had to type the command instead of using the visual picker because, for some unknown reason, you can't create a routine that plays music on the Pixel Tablet (on other speakers, yes). When all of these controls and parameters are available in the Google Home app, why do they not show up in the routine creation menu? I couldn't tell you. Why do I keep torturing myself then? Rita El Khoury / Android Authority Ah, the million-dollar question. To be honest, I don't really know or have an answer. I have a series of theories and thoughts about why I stick with Google's excruciating smart home platform, and I think the reality is somewhere in the middle. There's the sunk cost fallacy where I just can't walk away from something I've invested so much money and time in. There's the evil you know versus the evil you don't; I keep testing the Alexa app on my devices to see if it's any better and realize it has a different and equally frustrating set of issues, too. There's the hope that with Gemini, things will get better. There's the fact that I write on Android Authority, I own Pixel phones and watches and Google TVs, and so does my husband, and Google Home is the only platform that makes sense for us. There's the casting capability and its compatibility with my Samsung soundbar. And there's the simple photo album feature that I cherish more than anything on my Pixel Tablet and Nest Hub and that I wouldn't give up for anything else. Between the sunk cost fallacy, reticence to change, and the evil I know, there are many reasons why I stick with Google Home. There's also the fact that when things work, they work. And I'm an optimist who hopes they'll work the same way next time, too. I've bought and started using a Home Assistant Yellow to try to extricate myself from Google's ecosystem. That has been a long, painful, and frustrating journey, too. I love that I'm in control of my new Home Assistant setup, but I hate having to babysit every aspect of it. What I gained in control over my smart home, I lost in troubleshooting, setup, and ease of use. There's no ideal smart home platform out there, and as I said earlier… the evil I know. I feel that that's where most of us, Google Home survivors, are nowadays. We don't see the grass being greener anywhere else, so we might as well stick with the patchy blot we have here in the hopes that it'll get better. Soon™.
Gizmodo
2 days ago
- Gizmodo
How to Build a Functional Smart Home When You'll Never Own a House Yourself
Ah, yes, the American dream. A house with a white picket fence, a dog, and as many products as you can pile into a pickup truck that you paid for in cash, which I'm told is a type of green paper you can exchange for goods and services. Sounds nice; sounds normal; sounds totally and completely out of reach. The classic American dream may be dead, but at least we have the Internet of Things and the never-ending font of smart home products it's given rise to, right? I say that with my tongue ready to burst through my cheek like a post-gestation alien from Alien, but to be honest, I love my makeshift smart home. It makes me and my multitask-addled brain happy, because who has time for light switches and buttons? Certainly not I—I barely have time for paying my rent. Sorry, landlord, I simply don't have enough bandwidth today! If you're like me, which is to say a debt-drowning millennial who will probably never own walls and a roof outright, and you still want to have a smart home that feels functional, I'm (at the very least) pleased to inform you that this particular feat is actually doable. In fact, I know it's doable because I've done it, and as one disillusioned American adult to another, I'm going to tell you how to build your own, too. The first thing you'll need before you start smartening up your rented dwelling is a way to scream at all your gadgets. That means, if you don't already have one, you'll need a smart speaker. I personally use a 2nd-gen Google Nest Mini, and for a couple of reasons. I'm not going to lie, the number one reason is that I got one for free through Spotify, which ran a promotion back in 2019 for subscribers to its premium plan. The promotion has since ended, but the good news is that if you want to grab one yourself, you can scoop one up for as little as $30. Here's the deal with these speakers: they suck for playing music because they're frankly not built for that, but they do exactly what they need to in a smart home, which is to say, they understand commands poorly (all voice assistants suck, sorry). One advantage that I think Google has over an Amazon Echo speaker with Alexa, for example, is its Google Home app, which feels a lot more streamlined for quick smart home control compared to Amazon's Alexa app. I also think that Google Assistant is slightly better at understanding commands, but to be honest, that's like trying to decide which apple you'd rather pull from the compost and take a bite of. Either way, you'll need to make a choice here, because if you should want to expand the number of speakers in your apartment ever, you're not going to want to buy another speaker to replace the one you already have or, God forbid, live in a mixed Alexa and Google Assistant household. And once you make that choice, it's time to move on to the next most important facet of any smart apartment. See Echo Speakers at Amazon See Google Nest Mini (2nd Gen) at Amazon I have absolutely no chill when it comes to lighting. I mean that both figuratively, in that I am authoritarian about the type of lights I use in my apartment, and also in a more literal sense, in that I hate cool lighting—warm only for me. As a result of that quirk, I have a lot of lamps in my 500-square-foot apartment. I have five, to be exact, but two of those contain three bulbs, and one of them contains two, so that's a grand total of 10 light bulbs in one small apartment, just from lamps. As you might imagine, the smart lighting situation gets tricky pretty fast, but there are a few things you can do to make things less expensive and a little more manageable from a setup perspective. First, you can start by buying cheaper smart bulbs for the lamps that need them. Smart bulbs aren't necessary all of the time (I'll get into that in a moment), but they do offer some advantages, particularly the ability to dim or brighten them as needed. This is huge if you're as specific as me about lighting in your apartment. Brightness is also a feature that you do not have to shell out for the Philips Hue premium to attain. My apartment is stocked almost entirely with Wyze smart home lighting, and though they haven't always been the most consistent bulbs (they require quite a few firmware updates throughout the year), but they are mostly solid for doing anything you'd want smart bulbs to do. They change color, they connect to Google Home, and they come in packs of four for $44. If you don't want Wyze bulbs, Govee also makes affordable smart bulbs that will do the trick. The key here isn't just to have smart lighting, but also to label and assign all of your lamps correctly inside your chosen smart home app. In my case, that's the Google Home app, where you can connect all your devices and pair them with your smart speaker. To add a new device in the Google Home app all you need to do is navigate to the 'Device' tab at the bottom of the app and then tap 'Add' in the bottom-right corner. The app will ask what kind of device you want to add, where you want to add it, and then it should automatically look for devices on the same Wi-Fi network and prompt you to set it up (make sure your device is in the proper setup mode before you do that). Loading those bulbs in isn't enough, though. You should also label everything appropriately, so when you want to yell at your speaker to turn something off, you're not just shouting 'Light 4.' Consider 'bedroom lamp,' or if you have more than one lamp in your bedroom, 'nightstand lamp,' and 'corner lamp.' Once you have everything labeled appropriately, you should also create groups so that you can turn swaths of lights on and off. I have my lights divided into 'bedroom' and 'living room,' so when I say, 'turn the living room lights on,' my Google speaker knows what I mean. To create a speaker group: Once you have your lights and other devices in the Google Home app and have everything labeled, it's time to start thinking about expanding your apartment. See Wyze Bulbs at Amazon See Govee Bulbs at Amazon There's a secret to smart homes, and it's not always about buying smart products, per se. You can actually make dumb stuff smart with one very cheap gadget: smart outlets. Smart outlets, as the name suggests, are just plugs that you can connect to the internet and turn on/off at will. They obviously won't give a feature set beyond just on or off, but sometimes that's all you need. I've used smart outlets extensively in my makeshift smart apartment for all kinds of stuff. If you have a nice lamp, for example, that doesn't take the type of bulb that comes in a smart variety (like a candelabra bulb), but you don't want to screw around turning it off and on manually all the time, try a smart outlet. These are especially great if you're gauche like me and still like to use cheap string lights around Christmas time and don't want to plug them in and take them out constantly. It's a game-changer if you celebrate Christmas with a tree, too, since being able to turn your tree on and off with a voice command is incredibly simple. It's not just lights, though. You can also apply the same strategy to appliances. Before I got a window AC unit from July (more on that in a bit), I had a regular old dumb AC unit that needed to be turned off and on manually. It's not the biggest labor in the world having to press a button, but being able to use a voice command without getting your lazy, overheated ass up off the couch feels like a big perk when you actually have the ability. Think of smart outlets as your way of filling in the gaps. The best part is you can get them cheaply on Amazon. This set from Amazon gives you four plugs for just $25. I own several similar smart plugs from a nondescript brand that I assume is based in China, and they work surprisingly well. Just make sure whichever product you pick is compatible with the platform you've chosen—in my case, Google. You may also have to download a separate app for setup purposes when you buy brands like this, so just keep that in mind. With anything you connect to the internet, there is inherently a security risk, so please keep that in mind also. If you're extra cautious about digital privacy and security, smart home life may not be the life for you, since every app, gadget, and online service you plug your information into opens up another avenue to having your data stolen. That's the tradeoff you have to make to be a lazy human in 2025. See Smart Mini Plug at Amazon There are obviously a lot of gadgets out there in the smart home world that are great for people with houses—thermostats, fridges, ovens, security cameras, and more. But if you live in an apartment like me you may not be able to take advantage of those. Or most of those, I should say. There are some appliances that you should consider, though, like a Wi-Fi-enabled AC unit. I own one from July, a millennial-friendly window unit that doesn't look like total shit, and being able to connect the AC to the Google Home app has been a game-changer. One perk of having your AC unit connected to the internet is that you can turn if off or on remotely. When it's ridiculously hot out, I like to get my AC pumping before I get home from work so that it's actually cool in my apartment before I arrive. It's also great if you're away on vacation and you have a pet at home that you're worried about. Just pull open the July app and toggle your unit on. You can even select settings in the app like fan speed, temperature, and modes. Naturally, since it's Google-compatible, you can also activate the AC using your smart speaker, which is great in the morning when I want to lazily turn off my AC from bed. Another worthy category of your smart home experience is entertainment. Most TVs nowadays are smart home-ready, so be sure to check if your particular panel can connect to the platform you've chosen. Using voice commands to turn your TV on or off or change the volume isn't necessary, but it can be handy in a pinch, like when your cat accidentally lies on the remote while you're trying to sleep and you don't feel like getting out of bed to turn it back off (a true story). I also own a Chromecast streaming stick that I have plugged into a small TV in my bedroom. Since it's a Google product, it's naturally very compatible with the Google Home app and my Google smart speaker, so when I'm ready to go to bed, I can shout at the Google Assistant to 'stop casting' instead of whipping out my phone and disconnecting the stream from whatever app I'm using. You can also control volume with voice commands, but that feels maybe a little more annoying than using your phone as a remote. As a bonus gadget, you can also consider installing smart blinds from companies like Ikea, which are compatible with both Google Assistant and Alexa. These need some minor installation unlike the other things I've recommended, but they're only mildly invasive, which is to say you probably won't have your security deposit withheld for tossing them up. My parents have their entire house set up with smart blinds, and I've been pretty impressed with how convenient it is to use voice controls to raise and lower them. So those are my tips for giving yourself a smart home without breaking the bank or buying a $3,500 fridge. These gadgets obviously aren't going to give your apartment the highest IQ out there in the world of smart homes, but it's not going to flunk out of summer school, either. As a recap, here are the most important things you can do:
The Verge
11-07-2025
- The Verge
Google's latest Nest Learning Thermostat is more than $60 off for Prime Day
Google's fourth-generation Nest Learning Thermostat (the latest model) is one of the few smart home accessories I rely on every day, and it's at an all-time low price of $218.99 ($61 off) at Amazon for Prime Day. Prime Day is almost over, but Best Buy and Google are also offering a $40 discount. This generation introduced greater compatibility with HVAC and smart home platforms, improvements to its Smart Scheduling feature, and a significant hardware redesign. Verge reviewer Jennifer Pattison Tuohy said in her review that it 'improves on the original in almost every way.' Google's latest Nest Learning Thermostat offers a sleeker design, support for Matter, and a Soli radar sensor to detect if a person is approaching. It also includes a second-gen remote temperature sensor for monitoring the temp in a room of your choosing. Read our review. The first thing I noticed after installing mine was how big its display is. Turns out, it's 60 percent larger than previous models — large enough to show extra details in addition to your home's current temperature. You can customize what information is shown within the thermostat's settings, but I chose the time, humidity level, and outdoor temperature. The thermostat will only show the smartwatch-like complications when you're up close; if you're far away, the entire display is dedicated to a single piece of information. Previous versions of the Google Nest Learning Thermostat required a C-wire to provide power, but that's no longer the case. However, we still recommend using Google's compatibility checker to be 100 percent sure it will work with your HVAC system. Matter support is another first for this version of the Learning Thermostat, so you can use it with your preferred smart home platform, including Google Home, Apple HomeKit, Amazon Alexa, or Samsung's SmartThings. Once the thermostat is connected, you can use the platform's app or corresponding smart assistant to control your home's temperature. If you enable the Smart Scheduling feature, the thermostat will learn when you use your HVAC system and your preferred temperature, and begin making those changes automatically. You can always go back to manual control, but not having to think about changing the temperature when you wake up or before you go to sleep is as useful as it sounds. Similarly, this thermostat comes with a wireless temperature sensor, which you can put in a room that gets too hot or cold to ensure the HVAC system runs until that area is at your desired temp. The fourth-generation Nest Learning Thermostat is one of the few gadgets besides my smartphone that I rely on daily, and the only smart home accessory I consider a necessity. If you've been on the fence, there're only a few hours left to take advantage of this deal. Sign up for Verge Deals to get deals on products we've tested sent to your inbox weekly.
Entrepreneur
10-07-2025
- Entrepreneur
Thin iPhone 17, Apple Smart Home Device Expected in Spring
Apple also has a home device in the works. Here's when to expect a new lineup of Apple products. Apple is reportedly launching a slew of new products (iPhones, new iPads, a home device) in the first half of 2026, according to Bloomberg. New MacBook Airs, reportedly with the code names (J813 and J815), may also be released at the time as a device for the home, which was first reported in fall 2024. The home device from Apple is expected to look like a square iPad and be around the size of two iPhones. It will also have wall-mounting capabilities and function as a smart command center for the home, with control over locks, lights, sprinklers, speakers, and other smart home appliances. Related: Apple Is Making a Major Change to Its Operating Systems Across All Products. Here's What We Know. News of a super-thin iPhone 17 was first reported in January. It's expected to be only 6.25mm thick, which is about 20-25% thinner than all available iPhone 16 models, according to MacRumors. That phone is expected to be released at Apple's annual event in the fall. The iPhone 17e, which is being called the budget smartphone, is expected in the spring. Apple did not comment to Bloomberg regarding the release dates. MacRumors notes several products will be getting updated chips, including the MacBook Air and Pro (M5 chips), Apple Display, a low-cost iPad (faster chip), and the iPad Air (M4 chip). Related: Apple Is Reportedly Creating New Foldable iPads and iPhones. Here Are the Details.
