Google Nest Hub and Audio have gone suddenly dumb for me and many other users

C. Scott Brown / Android Authority

I returned from my Christmas vacation a few days ago to find that my Google smart speakers and displays have decided to completely ignore me. I was asking a simple question, “Hey Google, what’s the weather?” — the same question I’ve asked countless times before, but all I got was the animation loading for several minutes and no answer.

At first, I thought it was a geolocation issue, but the weather was showing up accurately on my Nest Hub’s display and giving me all the details if I manually clicked on it. It was just bugging out with voice commands.

Knowing that my Google speakers have decided to be contrarian to me recently (maybe because I’m using Gemini on my phone?), I told my husband to try it. He got the same endless loading animation. We repeated this on our second-gen Nest Hub and two Nest Audios to no avail. The Pixel Tablet seemed hit-and-miss. We disconnected all of them from power, rebooted our router, replugged them, and connected them again to no avail. We tried changing the Assistant voice, too, enabling and disabling multiple languages, still to no avail. I recorded the video below to show you the problem in action.

I also tried other voice commands. Turning off the lights or starting the vacuum work, so do many smart home controls. Playing music also works. Setting timers is hit-and-miss. Several users are complaining about this exact same issue on Google’s Support forums, and they’re saying it’s also occurring on the Nest Hub Max as well as the first-gen Google Home and Google Home Mini. Some have completely reset their speakers to see if that would fix the problem, but it hasn’t.

Like all of these reports, it’s very basic commands that are tripping my speakers. “What’s the weather?” or “What time is it?” make the Nest Hub and Audio go completely dumb. As if the speakers are negotiating with each other and trying to see which one should respond to me and failing to find the right one. Most times, it’s my phone nearby that answers me first. This used to happen when I was on a shitty 2Mbps connection more than three years ago, but it has never happened on my 600Mbps+ connection since then.

Are you facing this same issue? Let me know in the comments, please. I’ve reached out to Google to ask for comment, and will update this article if I hear back.

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