Gemini for Home is now better at hearing you in noisy rooms

Polishing the Google Home app is a clear priority for Google, and that’s evident in the sheer number of updates the company pushes out for the app. To round off September, Google Home is getting yet another update — the third update this month.

After rolling out better combined media and smart home commands, followed by another round of fixes that improved camera reliability and widget efficiency, Google is now making the Home app faster, more reliable, and better at hearing your commands.

According to Google, it has enhanced how Gemini for Home filters out background conversation when you give it a command in a loud room. This should now result in your request being successfully registered more often. And once the assistant does hear your request, it will reply to you faster, too. This applies to a broad set of common smart home, media, alarm, and timer commands.

Gemini for Home should also be more reliable in multilingual households, reducing cases where Gemini misunderstands what you’re asking. And in back-and-forth situations where Gemini encounters an error, it would no longer get stuck repeatedly responding, “I didn’t understand,” to subsequent requests.

Elsewhere, if you’re someone who often misplaces their phone around the house, this update is for you. Asking Gemini for Home to locate your phone is now a lot more reliable.

Smart home controls are getting more reliable

In addition to Gemini for Home changes, the Google Home app itself is getting some upgrades and fixes.

Before this update, sliding brightness down to 0% on single lights or group dimmers left some bulbs switched on at their minimum brightness. This has now been changed. Bringing the slider all the way down to 0% will now send a proper power-off command to the bulb.

Camera and doorbell tiles are also now easier to spot at a glance. Online tiles now appear as filled icons, helping you distinguish active cameras from inactive ones.

Elsewhere, Google says setting up new Nest devices across Android and iOS should now be smoother thanks to under-the-hood fixes for Bluetooth connections and Wi-Fi pairing. And if you’re setting up multiple devices back-to-back, the app can now securely cache your network credentials and reuse them when adding new devices.

There’s a long list of fixes, too

Apart from those additions, the update comprises several bug and stability fixes.

• Resolved an issue where Matter switches failed to show their offline status.
• Resolved issues where long-pressing tiles in the Favorites tab failed to open device controllers or routine editors.
• Corrected device type resolution so awnings and curtains map accurately.
• Improved video player buffering for historical camera footage.
• Resolved false “Video not available” errors at the end of camera event clips.
• Fixed video history loading on Walmart Onn cameras.
• Fixed an issue in Automations where multi-button switches and subdevices were missing their parent device name.

Have you already noticed performance or voice recognition improvements with Gemini for Google Home? Let us know in the comments below.