Google Home fixes arrive for cameras, Matter devices, and more

As anyone who has seriously built up a household around Google Home can attest to, the service can feel like it’s constantly in a state of flux. New fixes are arriving all the time, and today Google just shared word of a big wave of updates arriving for the company’s hardware. But that’s just the half of it, and Google’s also telling us about the latest improvements coming to Gemini and the Google Home app.

Google published an almost overwhelming Home changelog earlier today, detailing the past couple weeks’ worth of fixes and upgrades. Some of these read a little familiar, like promises for Gemini to understand us better — and here, specifically, Google’s putting a stop to devices blurting out “sorry, I didn’t understand,” in response to nothing at all.

We’re getting a few media-related upgrades, including smarter responses to requests to move music playback from one room to another, and fixes for misunderstanding commands to change volume levels. If you’re a YouTube TV subscriber, voice commands should start working better when viewing on smart displays.

Remember that issue with Pixel users missing alarms from the other day? Google’s fixing something that sounds very similar for smart home devices here, correcting an issue that would incorrectly set alarm volume to zero. It’s also attempting to fix a problem where devices would get confused about the distinction between regular timers and sleep timers for media playback.

If you’ve got a lot of Matter devices connected to your smart home, Google’s got a couple changes worth your attention. Compatible Matter smart plugs will now be able to share both real-time and cumulative power consumption with Home. Google’s also learning to finally differentiate between all sorts of doors and windows when it shows icons for related Matter devices.

Google continues to refine the smart camera experience in Home, resolving some performance issues when scrolling on iOS or opening or closing Android foldables. Familiar Face detection is also getting some improvements for the wired Nest Doorbell.

And then we’ve got just heaps upon heaps of general bugfixes, fixing glitches with device rotation, handing long home names, displaying online status, and a whole bunch of UI cleanup. For the full breakdown, check out the changelog link up top.