Google Home Users Seek Hacks for Improved Voice Assistant

Like Tom Petty once said, “The waiting is the hardest part,” which is true in life and also, apparently, in your smart home. If a recent Reddit thread is anything to go off of, Google Home users are starting to get impatient waiting for Google’s new Gemini-powered smart home upgrade, Gemini for Home, which is currently only available in early access.

Instead of waiting in line for their invite for Gemini for Home—a long-awaited upgrade that’s promising major upgrades to the Google Assistant experience—Google Home users are trying to hack their way (in a loose sense) into getting the supposedly upgraded voice assistant onto their Home devices. Those eager enough to try it who aren’t technologically inclined will be happy to know that the process basically just involves punching in a URL and hoping for the best.

According to Redditor u/Siciliano777, typing “googlehome://assistant/voice/setup” into the address bar in Chrome actually brings up the options to enable Gemini for Home on your personal Google devices. From there, some people have allegedly been able to enroll in the early access program and set up Gemini. Before you get your hopes up, though, a quick scan of the thread shows some mixed results. While some people say the trick worked, others have reported only getting the updated Gemini voices, but not actually the voice assistant. Such is the way of hacks, I suppose.

More than anything, though, the fact that so many people are even trying to force Gemini onto their devices says a lot. On one hand, it means people are obviously interested in a Gemini upgrade for their smart home, which could be considered a major win for Google. On the other hand, given the context of people’s overall dissatisfaction with Google Home as of late, it feels more like Home users are desperate to ditch the Google Assistant of yore for something that actually works.

As I’ve covered previously, Google is promising a lot with its Gemini for Home update, and it’s not just about next-gen abilities like being able to search your Nest camera history with natural language prompts. It’s also about actually delivering on the promise of what the Google Assistant was supposed to be in the first place (i.e., being able to do groundbreaking stuff like turn off all the lights in a room except one).

Whether it does that remains to be seen, though. For the record, I haven’t been able to test this supposed Gemini for Home hack myself, nor have I gotten a chance to test drive the Gemini for Home upgrade for any extended period. I did get a brief demo of Gemini for Home on Google’s new smart speaker, but it’s hard to say based on that contained demo how Gemini for Home functions IRL. Guess I’ll just have to wait like the rest of the eager Google Home denizens; either that or hope a weird hack from Reddit actually saves the day.