For Google Home to work an active internet connection is required. This means you need to connect your Google Home to wifi, before you can use it to play music, connect to wireless devices requesting calendar events, giving directions, making calls, checking the weather, etc.
If your Google home is not very well connected to the Internet or the connected devices are not responding with your Google Home commands, you may find that:
- Music playback is not very smooth, or the music starts and they freeze immediately.
- You cannot transfer messages to other home devices.
- Netflix or YouTube won’t open when you say this.
- online searches are not accurate and only work half the time.
- Google Home says «something went wrong, try again» too often.
- the device creates static even when nothing is playing.
Fortunately, since the Google Home is a wireless device, there are many places where we can find a possible solution to why it does not connect to Wi-Fi, not only from the device itself, but also from neighboring devices that are on the same device. . net .
Make sure it’s connected properly
It should be obvious, but Google Home doesn’t know how to connect to the Internet until you tell it how to connect to Wi-Fi. In other words, nothing will work on your Google Home until you set it up with the Google Home app.
Download Google Home for Android or get for iOS . The specific steps to follow in the app to connect Google Home to Wi-Fi are described in our guide » How to set up Google Home» .
If Google Home used to connect to Wi-Fi normally, but you recently changed wifi password you’ll need to reset your Google Home so you can update your password. To do this, you first need to disable its current settings and start over.
Here’s how to do it:
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In the Google Home app, tap on the device you want to reconfigure.
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Click Settings (transfer button) on the Google Home device for which you want to update the Wi-Fi password.
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Select wifi, and then select forget network .
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Click » Add» on the main screen of the application.
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Select » Set up device» and then » New Devices» .
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Select the home you want to add Google Home to and click Further .
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Continue with the on-screen instructions or follow the setup instructions above for help.
Move your router or Google Home
Your router is the only way Google Home can connect to the internet, so you should take a look at that connection point first. It’s easy: just move your Google Home closer to your router and see if the symptoms improve.
If Google Home works better when it’s closer to your router, then there’s a problem with your router or interference between your router and where your Google Home normally is.
The permanent solution is to either move the Google Home closer to the router, or move the router somewhere more central where it can reach a wider area, preferably away from walls and other electronics.
If you can’t move the router, or moving doesn’t do any good and restarting doesn’t help, but you’re sure the router is to blame for the Google Home Wi-Fi issue, you can replace the router with a better one. one , installing the best router antenna or purchase of mesh network instead, any of which should improve coverage.
When it comes to connections Bluetooth the same idea applies: move your Bluetooth device closer to Google Home or vice versa to make sure they are properly paired and can communicate properly.
If the static disappears, or they usually work better when they’re closer together, then it’s more of a distance or interference issue, in which case you’ll need to adjust the placement of items in the room so that other devices don’t interfere with Google Home. ,
Disable other network devices
It may seem like a drastic or even unrealistic solution just to get your Google Home working again, but throughput can become a real problem if you have a lot of devices connecting to the internet through the same network. If you have too many things actively using the network at the same time, you will definitely notice issues like buffering, songs stopping randomly or not even starting at all, as well as general delays and no responses from Google Home.
If you experience problems connecting to Google Home while performing other network-related tasks such as downloading movies to your computer, streaming music to Chromecast , playing video games, etc., pause these activities or consider doing them only when you don’t. using your Google Home.
Technically this is not a problem for Google Home, Netflix, your HDTV, your computer, music streaming services or any other device. Instead, it’s simply the result of maximizing your available bandwidth.
The only way to get around limited bandwidth connections is to upgrade your internet to a plan that provides more bandwidth, or as we mentioned above, start limiting which devices use the network at the same time.
Restart your router and Google Home
If shutting down problematic network devices is preventing Google Home from connecting to Wi-Fi, there’s a good chance that Google Home needs to be restarted, and while you’re at it, you can also restart your router to be sure.
Restarting both devices should fix any temporary issue causing the intermittent issues.
You can reset your Google Home by unplugging the power cord from the wall, wait 60 seconds, and then plug it back in. Another way is to use the Google Home app:
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Click on the device you want to reboot.
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Select the settings icon at the top and then the three horizontal dot menus.
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Select option reboot .
See our router restart guide, if you need help with this.
Reset your router and Google Home
Section above for restart these devices, as you probably noticed, will simply disable them and then restart them. Reset is different, as it will permanently remove the software and restore it to the state it was in when you first bought the device.
Resetting should be your last attempt to get Google Home to work with Wi-Fi because it will erase any settings you have made for it. Reset Google Home unlinks all devices and music services connected to it, and resetting the router erases things like name and password your WiFi networks .
So obviously you only want to do this step if all the others listed above don’t work to get Google Home on Wi-Fi. However, due to how destructive it is, this is the most likely solution to most Google Home Wi-Fi issues as it resets everything that can be reset.
If you want, you can reset one but not the other to see if the problem goes away without having to restore software on both devices. For example, follow the steps below to reset your router, and then check, whether Google Home is connected to Wi-Fi.