Instead of waiting in line for their invitations to Gemini for Home — a long-awaited upgrade that’s promising major upgrades to the Google Assistant experience — Google Home users are trying to hack their way (in a loose sense) to getting the supposedly advanced voice assistant on their Home devices. Those who are curious to try it out and are not technically inclined will be happy to know that the process basically just involves punching in a URL and hoping for the best.
According to Redditor u/Siciliano777, typing “googlehome://assistant/voice/setup” into the address bar in Chrome actually brings up options to enable Gemini for Home on your personal Google devices. From there, some people have reportedly been able to enroll in the Early Access program and install Gemini. However, before you get your hopes up, a quick scan of the thread shows some mixed results. While some say the trick worked, others have reported only getting the updated Gemini voices, but not the actual voice assistant. I believe this is the way hacks work.
However, more than anything, the fact that so many people are trying to force Gemini onto their devices speaks volumes. On one hand, this means that people are clearly interested in Gemini upgrades for their smart homes, which can be considered a big win for Google. On the other hand, given the context of people’s overall dissatisfaction with Google Home recently, it seems like Home users are desperate to ditch the old Google Assistant for something that actually works.
As I’ve covered before, Google is promising a lot with its Gemini for Home update, and it’s not just about next-generation capabilities, like being able to search your Nest camera history with natural language prompts. It’s also about actually delivering on the promise that Google Assistant was supposed to make in the first place (ie, being able to do phenomenal things like turn off all the lights except one in a room).
However, it remains to be seen whether he does so. For the record, I have not been able to test this alleged Gemini for Home hack myself, nor have I had a chance to test the Gemini for Home upgrade for any extended period of time. I Did Get a brief demo of Gemini for Home on Google’s new smart speaker, but based on that demo it’s hard to say how Gemini for Home works IRL. I guess I’ll have to wait like the rest of the eager Google Home residents; Either that or hope a weird hack from Reddit actually saves the day.
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