How to Fix Echo or Google Home Won’t Connect to WiFi

Congratulations, you have a new Google Home or Amazon Echo device! But for some reason, even if you’re sure you have the correct password, it won’t connect to Wi-Fi. The good news is that there are simple solutions.

Whether you have a new Google Home or a new Amazon Echo device, setup should be easy. As long as you have the correct accounts, the apps will go through all the steps in a simple way. But sometimes you can get stuck on connecting to Wi-Fi even if you are sure you have the correct password. Often the problem isn’t with your password, but with the network you’ve chosen, or with your smartphone trying to maintain a working internet connection.

Turn on airplane mode and turn on Wi-Fi

Echo and Google Home devices learn your Wi-Fi data through handover. Your smartphone directly connects to the device (creating a temporary Wi-Fi network defined for them), and then the Google or Amazon app transmits your SSID information (your Wi-Fi network name) and password. Unfortunately, smartphones are persistent in maintaining a good network connection. When you connect to a new network, your device may find that it can’t find the internet and switch to using cellular data instead. When this happens, your phone is disconnected from Google Home or Echo and the installation process cannot be completed.

Try a different Wi-Fi group

Google Home and Amazon Echo can connect on the 2.4GHz or 5GHz band. It can be tempting to go with the 5GHz band as it tends to face fewer congestion issues and offers faster speeds and for these reasons it should probably be your first choice. But consider how far your new voice assistant is from your router. If this distance is too far (you are on the edge of your house), then your connection may be unreliable. In this case, try the 2.4 GHz band. If you are already trying to use the 2.4 GHz band, try the 5 GHz band as interference may occur. If you have a cell system, it will take care of choosing the best group for you.

Ad hoc networks may not be supported

Amazon notes that ad hoc networks are not supported, so if you’re using one, you’ll need to switch to more traditional infrastructure mode in order for your Echo devices to connect to Wi-Fi. Google doesn’t say if you can use ad hoc network with their home devices, but if you’re having trouble it might be worth checking in infrastructure mode to see if that helps.

Reboot your router

It may sound silly, but even to this day, rebooting your router is a reliable troubleshooting step. Even if you can successfully connect other devices, if all else fails, you can try this step and it might solve your problem. Simply unplug your router’s power cable and wait at least ten seconds before plugging it back in. While you’re at it, Amazon also recommends that you restart your Echo as a troubleshooting step. The process is the same, unplug it and wait ten seconds before plugging it back in. If you have a Google Home, the same process can be helpful.

Some routers may require some additional steps to work well with Voice Assistant devices. Google notes that Access Controlled is disabled for some Netgear Nighthawk models and the «Allow guests to see each other and access my LAN» option is enabled to work with Google home devices.

If all goes well, you should be up and running in no time. Just remember to turn off Airplane Mode when you’re done!

If you’re still having issues, check out the Google and Amazon support pages for more information. We had a good experience with both chat help options and they were able to sort out the few issues we had that we couldn’t fix on our own. They may ask you to take troubleshooting steps, so it may be helpful to use a laptop or connect a voice assistant device near your desktop. Just be patient and let them know what steps you’ve already taken so you don’t repeat too much work.