Nest Home Mini owners report serious issues after Gemini upgrade

Gemini is coming to your Nest Home speaker, regardless of age, size, shape, or whether it used to be called a "Google Home" or not.

Google is trumpeting loudly that this is an upgrade, but a number of Nest Home users who have already upgraded may disagree. According to a number of accounts, Gemini is breaking smart speakers, leaving them looping and even bricked.

Gemini "upgrade" has left a number of speakers reeling

Gemini, Google's AI-powered assistant, is meant to be the saving grace for many Nest Home speakers. In recent years, many users have noticed their Home devices getting dumber and less helpful, and it was hoped that Gemini hitting those same speakers would breathe new life into them.

Unfortunately, it seems like the opposite is happening. A number of Nest Home Mini owners have noticed that getting Gemini on their speakers has made things worse. Much worse, in some cases.

In a post to the r/GoogleHome subreddit, user aileanaodh comments that, since the Gemini update, all three of their Nest Minis no longer work.

According to the post, after the Gemini update, the three devices fell into a reboot-loop, before ultimately powering down and refusing to come back up again.

It would be easy to write this off as an isolated experience, but that does not appear to be the case. A week ago, user krypton22 posted that their pair of Nest Home Mini speakers no longer work properly following the Gemini update. Instead, they need to be constantly re-paired to the Home app, before eventually dropping the connection after a few hours.

And that's not all; two weeks ago, another user had serious issues getting their Nest Home Minis to connect to their Home app after the Gemini update. Thankfully, this story had a happy ending, but it's concerning that more and more issues are cropping up with what is essentially a server-side upgrade.

It's tempting to assume that only Nest Home Minis are affected, but this post from nine months ago highlighted a Hub that refused to work after the update.

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In fact, a quick dig into the r/GoogleHome subreddit shows that large parts of the update are not going particularly well for a number of users. One sad tale complains that the update broke all the features the user used to stay in contact with their son, while others simply point out that Gemini is a little bit lacking in the intellect department.

But, on the plus side, Gemini will still fart if you ask it to.