Some Google Home Speakers are downloading hundreds of gigs of data for no reason

Smart speakers keep themselves updated by automatically downloading firmware updates in the background. However, this ability to quietly download data in the background can also become a problem, as we’re now seeing with the new Google Home Speakers.

According to several users on Reddit, the new Google Home speaker has been absolutely hogging data in the background. Some users say their speakers downloaded nearly 140GB of data overnight, with no clear reason for it. Another user shared a screenshot of their internet statistics showing that their three new Google Home speakers downloaded around 280GB of data (see the first image below).

In a follow-up comment, the user also shared a screenshot of the monthly data usage for one of their Google Home speakers, which reportedly downloaded 3.3TB of data over the past month. It’s clearly a bug, but it’s surprising because the smart speaker doesn’t have any reason to download that much data.

In another Reddit post, a user said their Google Home speaker repeatedly downloaded a firmware update of ~460MB every 20 minutes, resulting in about 35GB of data downloaded every day. To make matters worse, the user reported that although their speaker kept downloading the update, it didn’t actually update the firmware. The user also said that Google sent them a replacement unit, but it’s stuck in the same download loop.

If you have a Google Home Speaker (especially the new 2026 model), you may want to check your router’s data usage statistics. This is especially concerning for users with an internet plan that offers only a limited amount of data each month, or those whose internet providers have a soft cap on data usage.

It’s unclear why Google Home Speakers have suddenly become so data-hungry, but the issue will hopefully be fixed soon. In a statement to 9to5Google, the company said that “a fix is already rolling out and should address this for users.”