Google just gave its troubled Home app the makeover it desperately needed. The tech giant unveiled a complete redesign featuring Gemini AI integration, 70% faster startup times, and 80% fewer crashes - finally addressing years of user complaints about the smart home control center that manages over 800 million connected devices.
Google isn't sugar-coating it anymore. After years of user frustration, the company's admitting its Home app has been a mess - and now it's doing something about it. The complete overhaul rolling out today represents the biggest shakeup to Google's smart home strategy since it acquired Nest back in 2014.
"I want to be very direct, the Google Home app has not been the experience that we've always wanted it to be," Anish Kattukaran, Chief Product Officer at Google Home and Nest, told reporters during a briefing ahead of today's announcement. That brutal honesty sets the tone for what Google's calling its most significant smart home update in years.
The numbers tell the story of just how broken things were. Over the past year alone, Google shipped more than 100 performance updates trying to fix the app that now manages over 800 million devices from 50,000-plus manufacturers. The latest overhaul delivers 70% faster startup times and slashes crashes by 80% - improvements that should have happened years ago.
But performance fixes are just the foundation. The real news is how Google is weaving its Gemini AI throughout the entire smart home experience, turning what was once a clunky device manager into something approaching an intelligent home assistant.
The redesigned app strips away complexity with just three main tabs: Home, Activity, and Automation. It's a dramatic simplification from the previous interface that often left users hunting through menus. New gesture controls let you swipe between device views and camera feeds, borrowing familiar patterns from apps like YouTube.
Google is finally consolidating its Nest acquisition too. More than a decade after buying the smart device maker, the company is migrating all Nest functionality into the Google Home app. Nest thermostats from 2015 onward, cameras, doorbells, Protect smoke detectors, and Yale lock integrations are all moving over. The standalone Nest app isn't disappearing immediately, but its days are clearly numbered.
The AI integration goes beyond simple voice commands. A new "Ask Home" feature lets users type or speak natural language queries like "when did the kids come home?" or "did I leave the car door open?" Gemini can control multiple devices simultaneously, find specific camera clips, and even create complex automations just by describing what you want.
