Gemini for Home Early Access Is Now Available
▼ Summary
– Gemini for Home is rolling out in the US for English-language Nest devices from the past decade, requiring enrollment in the Early Access program.
– It supports expanded voice commands for music, podcasts, and smart home control, including complex requests with multiple parts and exceptions.
– The assistant can handle household coordination tasks like calendar events, reminders, and lists, and provides contextual conversations with short-term memory.
– Limitations include non-deterministic responses, potential inaccuracies, and the inability to switch back to Google Assistant once enrolled.
– Full features require a Google Home Premium subscription on select newer devices, while older models get a free version, with global expansion planned for early 2026.
The Gemini for Home voice assistant is now available in the US through an Early Access program, bringing a new level of conversational intelligence to compatible Nest speakers and displays. This rollout marks a significant step forward for smart home technology, offering users more natural and intuitive ways to interact with their devices.
Gemini introduces a dramatically expanded range of voice commands that feel more like talking to a person than issuing robotic instructions. You can now ask for music in remarkably flexible ways, such as requesting “that song that goes [lyrics]” or “the song from [movie] where [scene in the movie].” It can handle nuanced requests like asking for popular country songs from this summer and then playing the second one it lists. The assistant will also play albums of the year from specific award shows, find similar songs, and locate podcast episodes about any topic you name.
For smart home control, Gemini demonstrates superior capability with complex, multi-part requests and exceptions. You can tell it to “turn off all the lights, except for the office lights” or announce “I’m about to cook, can you turn on the lights by the stove” without needing to specify exact device names.
Google Home Premium Advanced subscribers gain additional AI-powered features including the ability to search camera history with natural language queries. You can ask “Were any packages delivered?” or “What happened in my home today?” and receive intelligent summaries of detected events like “Garage door opening.”
Household coordination becomes more intuitive as Gemini understands the intent behind calendar, list, timer, and reminder requests. It can add dentist appointments to your calendar, remind you to make reservations well in advance, and set multiple named timers simultaneously. The assistant can check sports schedules and automatically add games to your calendar, suggest recipes based on available ingredients, and add items to your shopping list with simple voice commands.
Gemini Live represents a particularly advanced feature where continuous conversation becomes possible after saying “Hey Google, let’s chat.” This mode eliminates the need for repeated wake words, allows you to interrupt responses, and continues until you say “OK, I’m done.”
Google provides approximately 100 example commands to help users explore the system’s capabilities. The company emphasizes that Gemini differs significantly from traditional Google Assistant by understanding more ambiguous, natural language rather than following preset command scripts.
During this preview period, Google acknowledges several limitations worth noting. The non-deterministic nature of Gemini means it doesn’t always provide identical responses to the same question, though answers remain helpful. While many media, smart home, calendar, and reminder actions support natural language, Google continues upgrading all actions to take full advantage of the new technology.
The ability to combine multiple action types into single commands remains limited, currently working primarily with smart home devices where you might say “turn on the TV, dim the lights and set the temp to 72 degrees.” Complex command support currently focuses on lights, cameras, and thermostats, with expansion planned.
Contextual conversation memory exists but has limitations, returning to a conversation after some time resets the context, and switching topics during a session might carry over some previous context. Google also notes that inaccuracies can occur, particularly with very recent information, recommending users verify factual responses before relying on them.
Background noise remains a challenge for Gemini Live, with Google working to improve audio models’ ability to distinguish between user speech, Gemini’s responses, and environmental sounds. Users can provide feedback directly by saying “Hey Google, send feedback,” though it’s important to know that once you switch to Gemini for Home, you cannot revert to the previous Google Assistant.
The complete Gemini Live experience requires a Google Home Premium subscription and works on Google Nest Mini (2nd gen), Google Nest Audio, Google Nest Hub (2nd gen), and Google Nest Hub Max. The standard Gemini for Home replacement for Google Assistant remains free and extends to original Google Home, Google Home Mini (1st gen), Google Home Max, Google Nest Hub (1st gen), and Google Nest Wifi point devices.
The updated experience introduces ten more natural voices and features blue and purple lighting on newer devices, with an enhanced voice interface appearing on Nest Hub displays after activation. To enroll in the Early Access program, open the Google Home app (version 4.1 or newer), tap your profile picture or initial, navigate to Settings in older designs, and select Early Access near the bottom of the menu. International expansion beyond US English is scheduled for early 2026.
(Source: 9to5 Google)
