What’s New in Google Home: September 16, 2026

On Wednesday, September 16, 2026, local time, Google released the latest “What’s new in Google Home” update, outlining the latest features and enhancements rolling out for the smart home service Google Home.

This edition of “What’s new in Google Home” announces a wide variety of quality improvements, including multiple bug fixes for “Gemini for Home (Early Access)” regarding voice assistant follow-up questions, TV streaming playback, “Gemini Live,” broadcasting, and playlist playback, alongside updates to Google Home app widgets, multi-account switching, device tile displays, setup processes, and camera live view displays. Additionally, early access has newly launched for “Google Home MCP,” a new feature that enables AI agents like “Google Antigravity,” “Claude,” “Hermes,” and “OpenClaw” to control devices and access history within the Google Home ecosystem.

Release notes for 2026

September 2, 2026

Gemini for Home (Early access)

Voice Assistant

• Expanded capabilities and understanding for media controls: Gemini on speakers and displays now understands a broader range of voice commands across media and home device controls. And, you can now combine media commands with other commands to get things done faster.

Try saying:

• “Turn off the lights and stop the music.”
• “Skip this song and turn on the backyard lights.”
• “Stop captions on this video.”
• Addressed issues impacting alarms and lists: We’ve recently addressed issues that were impacting some users’ ability to create and edit alarms and lists. We also corrected an issue in our Settings UI to make it clear that Google Keep continues to be a supported app.

Google Home App

Automations

• Third-party automation privacy: The app now respects visibility restrictions configured in third-party partner applications, keeping private third party app routines from cluttering your home automation list.
• Alphabetical sorting in the automation editor: Starters, conditions, and actions in the automation editor are now sorted alphabetically, helping you find specific device capabilities quickly.

What’s new in Google Home – Google Nest Help

“Gemini for Home (Early Access)”

Voice Assistant

Several bug fixes and improvements have been implemented for the voice assistant powered by Google AI “Gemini” on Google Home smart speakers and smart displays.

These updates reduce instances of unnecessary follow-up questions and conversations ending unnaturally, while also fixing an issue where smart displays failed to launch TV streaming services. In addition, problems where Gemini Live would have the device interrupt its own conversation and issues causing error messages when executing house-wide broadcasts have been resolved, making broadcasts much more reliable.

Improvements have also been made to address cases where personal playlists could not be recognized and played.

Google Home App

Quality Improvements

Google Home app widgets have been optimized to pause background updates and polling while the smartphone screen is turned off, locked, or showing a screensaver, helping to reduce battery consumption on both smartphones and connected cameras.

Widgets now refresh instantly when the screen lock is released. Furthermore, issues such as “Home not found” errors and setting resets that occurred when switching between multiple Google Home accounts have decreased.

Other fixes include resolving an issue where sensor, camera, and smoke/carbon monoxide detector tiles remained grayed out after returning from the device controller screen, as well as fixing setup halts during Wi-Fi pairing. Startup crashes on Google TV devices have also been resolved, and the UI for in-app notification banners has been improved.

Additionally, enhancements are underway for smoke and carbon monoxide alarm notifications to display the device’s current status within the app after an alarm has been cleared.

Camera Features

On the Android version of the Google Home app, a fix has been applied for an issue where live video tiles would temporarily turn black when returning to the “Favorites” tab from full-screen camera view, requiring manual scrolling to restore them. Users can now seamlessly return to live video feeds.

A freezing issue encountered when scrolling through timelines with no recorded footage has also been resolved. On the iOS version of the Google Home app, a fix addressed an issue where tapping the “Live” button during recorded video playback failed to switch smoothly to the live view.

“Google Home MCP”

Of particular note in this “What’s new in Google Home” update is the launch of early access for “Google Home MCP,” a new feature that connects AI agents like “Google Antigravity,” “Claude,” “Hermes,” and “OpenClaw” with Google Home.

AI agents supporting the “Model Context Protocol (MCP),” such as “Google Antigravity,” “Claude,” “Hermes,” and “OpenClaw,” can now directly interact with home devices and event histories ranging from the Nest Doorbell and Nest Thermostat to Works with Google Home (Matter) compatible lights. This enables AI agents to perform tasks such as cross-summarizing video feeds from multiple home cameras, analyzing laundry frequency or light usage times from device status histories, or sending voice messages via Google Home speakers once a process is complete. Use cases such as building custom smart home dashboards using only natural language instructions are also envisioned.

Google Home MCP early access is rolling out initially in English to Google Home Premium Advanced users in the United States. Getting started requires creating a Google Cloud project and configuring Google Home MCP, after which the AI agent will prompt you to sign in and grant permissions.

While high-security operations such as unlocking doors are restricted in Google Home MCP, depending on the connected agent, unexpected behaviors may still occur. Therefore, reviewing developer policies and terms of service is highly recommended.

Google Home App Links

Source: Google