If you own a Google Home, Nest, or other Google-produced smart speaker and have experienced an issue where your device randomly disconnects from Bluetooth after just a few minutes, you’re not alone. Trying to stream music or podcasts to the speakers has been a source of much frustration for many users, and Google has only recently promised to fix the issue after more than a year of complaints.
Android Police reports that hundreds of users have complained about the issue on support forums and Twitter since 2018. The behaviour has been somewhat random, with some users finding their Google Home and Nest devices disconnecting from their smartphones or another wireless speaker they’re streaming to after just a couple of minutes, while others enjoy playback for 15 minutes before the unprompted disconnect occurs.
There’s no permanent solution to the problem, either, as forcefully disconnecting from a device, power cycling the smart speaker, and even asking it to forget all connected devices will still result in random disconnects when reconnecting to Bluetooth devices again. Google has been slow to publicly address or acknowledge the problem, but finally, on Feb. 13, the official Google Nest Twitter account indicated that the Nest developers were aware of the problem and are working on a fix. The company provided no timeline on when that will be implemented.
We’re sorry for the trouble! Our team is already aware of this and we’re working on a fix, we’ll bubble this up to our team and check back in once we have an update. Hang tight!
— Google Nest (@googlenest) February 14, 2020
That was followed with an official statement from a Google Nest community specialist on the Google Nest help forums on Feb. 20 reiterating that the Nest team was aware of the issue and working on a resolution, but that users should continue to file feedback reports through the Google Home and Nest smart speakers, or through the Google Home mobile app.
Hey Everyone,
Apologise for the delayed response here. I know how annoying and challenging it can be to Our team is aware of this issue and are currently investigating for a fix not have such an important feature work properly. The team is aware of the issue and working on finding a solution.
In the mean time, please continue to send feedback via voice command by saying “Hey Google, send feedback”, and use the keywords “GHT3 Bluetooth IN keeps on disconnect”. To know more about sending feedback, please click this link.
@ James M: Appreciate your help on this thread.
I’ll make sure to get back on this thread once I got more information.
Cheers!
Muddi
For the time being there’s not much users can do to fix the Bluetooth disconnect problem, aside from using Wi-Fi to stream, or playing music directly from online music services such as Spotify through the speakers themselves. Given that Bluetooth pairing is an advertised feature of Google’s smart speakers, hopefully the company will quickly fix the issue now that it has publicly acknowledged its existence.