This might have been a big week for Google’s Pixel devices, but Google Home just jumped-in to steal a bit of the spotlight. We have at least 15 improvements on the way to the Google Home app, as well as the Gemini for Home experience. While most of the changes today aren’t new features, Google has made big moves in the improvement space.
For the Google Home app, Google has optimized the widgets to make them much more battery-efficient. They’ve made it so the widgets no will pause background updates and polling whenever your phone’s screen is powered off, locked, or running a screensaver. They also got rid of that “Home not found” error that happened when you switched accounts, show more reliable deice tile statuses, made device and Google TV setups smoother, and are improving smoke alarm notifications.
In Gemini for Home, Google has minimized the situations where Gemini would ask unnecessary follow-up questions, fixed a TV streaming playback bug on smart displays, fixed broadcast errors, and improved playlist reliability through Gemini commands.
There are several fixes in camera streams and feeds as well, including two on Android and another on iOS. The full descriptions for those bug fixes can be found below in the full changelog for this week’s Google Home update.
Google Home MCP launch
On a bit of a potentially bigger note, Google is rolling out Google Home Model Context Protocol (MCP) into early access. What is Google Home MCP? This is a first step towards allowing AI Agents to interact with your Google Home.
Google explains it as, “Any agent that supports calling MCP tools, such as Google Antigravity, Claude, Hermes, OpenClaw or others, can now interact with all of the devices and event history in the Google Home ecosystem.” This could mean asking your AI Agent to ask very specific questions. You can ask it look into cameras to tell you what your kids did when they got home from school. You could ask how long lights were left on over the past week or how many loads of laundry were done.
This Google Home MCP will also allow you to build a custom dashboard from your AI Agents.
You can read more on Google Home MCP at this support post.
Gemini for Home (Early Access)
Voice Assistant
We’re rolling out the following updates and fixes:
- Improved follow up question behavior: Minimized cases where Gemini asks unnecessary follow-up questions or ends conversations awkwardly.
- Fixed TV streaming playback: Fixed an intermittent issue that prevented Gemini from launching TV streaming providers on smart displays.
- Reduced Live Mode interruptions: Addressed an issue where some devices interrupted themselves during Live Mode.
- Reduced Broadcast errors: Resolved an issue where there were error messages when attempting to broadcast. You can now more reliably broadcast across your whole Home.
- Improved Playlist reliability: Fixed some issues where Gemini wasn’t able to identify and play personal playlists.
Google Home App
Quality Improvements
- Battery-efficient Home widgets: Optimized Google Home app widgets to pause background updates and polling whenever your phone’s screen is powered off, locked, or running a screensaver. This conserves battery life on both your phone and connected cameras while ensuring your widgets refresh immediately the moment you unlock your phone.
- Smoother multi-account switching: If you have multiple accounts that you use with Google Home, switching between them is now more reliable with fewer “Home not found” errors and preference resets.
- More reliable device tile status: Resolved an issue where online sensors, cameras, and smoke and carbon monoxide detector tiles could appear grayed out after returning from device controller screens. This ensures your device tiles consistently reflect their active status at a glance without needing to reload.
- More reliable smart device setup: Addressed several setup and onboarding issues, including eliminating stalls during Wi-Fi pairing. This ensures a smoother, frustration-free onboarding journey when adding new smart devices to your home.
- Smoother Google TV startup: Resolved a startup crash on Google TV devices, ensuring the Google Home experience launches reliably on your television.
- More flexible in-app banners: Improved UI for triggering actions in announcement banners in the Google Home app.
- Smoke alarm notifications: Rolling out improvements to smoke and carbon monoxide alarm notifications to show current device status in the Google Home app after an alarm has already been cleared.
Camera updates
- Improved camera live stream tile reliability (Android): Resolved an issue where returning from the full-screen camera view back to the Favorites tab caused live stream tiles to temporarily turn black until manually scrolled. Live feeds now continue streaming seamlessly upon navigating back.
- Smoother camera history scrolling across recording gaps (Android): Video timeline scrolling now smoothly scrolls past unrecorded or offline gaps without freezing.
- Faster switching to live camera stream (iOS): Fixed an issue where tapping the “Live” button while watching recorded events failed to redirect smoothly into the live view, leaving playback paused.
Google Home Platform
- Rolling out Google Home MCP (early access): We’re beginning the rollout of the new Google Home MCP in early access. Once it is available, your personal agent (e.g. Antigravity, OpenClaw) can now interact with all of the devices and event history in the Google Home ecosystem. To learn more, check out this blog on the Google Home & Nest Community.
Read the original post: Google Home Gets 15+ Major Improvements
This articles is written by : Nermeen Nabil Khear Abdelmalak
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