Tired of your Google Home device getting activated because of random advertisements? You were probably playing a video on Youtube, and the microphone heard one of the wake words. Such problems are what people may encounter with Google Home. Even with this problem, Google Home is a very competitive rival to Amazon’s Echo and one of the best smart speakers available in the market right now.
In this article, we’re going to address how you can stop Google Home from activating because of merely hearing one of the wake words “Hey Google” or “Ok Google” on video and audio advertisements on your mobile, TV, and other electronic devices. Find the solution here.
Productive Commands using Google Home
Ignoring this problem, google home can be used for a variety of impressive tasks and functions. Primarily Google Home is used as a speaker, but as Google Assistant is integrated into the device, here is a list of some of the things different versions of Google Home can do.
- Playing Music – You can play different playlists and music on your connected devices and enjoy yourself while working or doing some chores etc.
- Alarms and Timers – Setting alarms and timers could be integral for doing different tasks and things throughout the day; this is made easy by using Google Home.
- Scheduling – You might want to schedule activities and dates for specific meetings and gatherings and use Google Home and Google Assistant to manage the calendar.
- Texting – Sending instant messages about different things to your contacts is also one of the more essential features of Google Assistant that you have access to.
- Calling – Another very incredible feature of such a smart speaker is that you can call any one of your contacts by saying their names into the Google Home device’s microphone.
- Taking Notes – Want to write something down but out of paper and pens? Simply activate the Google Assistant and take notes of all the important things you need to remember.
- Calculations – You might not be able to make quick calculations on your own in your everyday life. For this purpose, you can use the Google Home device.
When Does Google Home activate on its own?
Over a certain period, many users have reported this error. The error is that they encountered the Google Home device’s activation without manually speaking into the microphone. There are multiple reasons for which this problem can occur. Here are some of the commonly reported ones.
- Watching a Google Ad – Imagine being on your phone, listening to music while suddenly an ad plays in between. The ad is about a google product, let’s say about Google Home itself. When the voice actor says “Hey Google” or “Ok Google” to activate the device in the ad, not only does that device get activated but also the device you have in your room gets activated as well. Because it heard the activation voice saying the wake word for the Assistant. This is one of the many situations where your Google Home device can activate on its own.
- Watching some other video – There are many advertisements and videos where Google devices might be used. In such cases, the person may end up saying the wake word, which can trigger the device to turn itself on. This is very annoying if you don’t want to actually activate the device at that specific moment.
- Listening to music – You could be listening to music on your Google Home device, and some kind of advertisement might pop up with the activation words, making the Google Assistant active. Such an untimely interruption makes you feel bad about your decision and could even make you want to dispose of the product.
These are just some of the scenarios you might face where your speaker device might activate the Google Assistant when you don’t even manually speak into the activation microphone. These situations may make you feel out of options because there aren’t many ways of dealing with this situation, but we’re here to help.
Reported Reviews
From people just simply rating the product badly to users flooding the support website of google with questions about how to stop their Google home from getting activated by random voices saying “Hey Google” many reviews have been reported.
There have been many negative reviews and questions asked on forums looking for a solution for this problem, but as of yet, nobody has found a real solution. Therefore we’re going to mention the answer to you for solving this problem temporarily. This solution might not be a permanent fix but certainly will help till Google releases a patch, or this error is fixed completely.
What is Google’s response to this?
Google hasn’t yet released a solution for this situation, and a huge number of users are complaining about the product itself due to this problem. There aren’t any positive results or actual helpful articles on Google Support for this problem, and that is why people are in disarray.
One advantage of Amazon Echo is that the user can set their own wake word without going through any problem. This also helps in avoiding the device from activating unwantedly. Although there is no official solution from Google, it has been rumored that Google is working on introducing the ability to change the wake word on the user’s preference.
Does having a Voice match on help?
Voice match simply refers to scanning the frequency and pitch of a specific user’s voice before allowing access to the Assistant. This is a feature available in Google Home. Although having a voice match on should help but there are also cases of user errors where even while having a voice match on, this error occurred. Therefore, even after using a voice match, there are chances that you might still encounter this error.
What is the solution?
One solution that all the users of different versions of Google Home can use to stop their devices from getting activated without command. That solution is merely switching off the microphone button when not in use. This way, the device won’t respond to the voice it hears but will still offer speaker abilities.
This is the only method applicable to avoid this problem until Google actually releases a solution that stops this error from occurring with the use of user-preferred wake words.
Here are the exact locations of the microphone buttons on each of the versions of Google Home so that you know where to look when trying to close the mic of the devices.
- In Google Home Mini
In the smaller version of the Google Home device, the microphone switch is situated next to the power cable. To stop the device from hearing stranger voices and activate google assistant, you can simply slide the switch to mute or unmute the microphone depending upon your choice. - In Google Home
In the case of the basic version of the Google Home device, you can simply stop the unwanted activation of the Assistant by manually closing the microphone button, which is located at the back of the speaker. Once muted, the speaker will not pick up any voices and thus avoid unnecessary activation. - In Google Home Max
When it comes to the max version of the Google Home device, similar to the base version, the mute button is located at the back of the speaker itself and can be adjusted by sliding according to the user’s preference. This way, any unwanted noise can be blocked from being understood by the microphone.
Though Google hasn’t yet released an official solution for this problem, it is definitely under the radar, and a solution must be working out in the headquarters. Until then, we can only do this to resolve this issue and hope that the customer support provides the required solution and allows us to choose our own wake words to make the activation process authorized and user-centered.
Conclusion
We explained the problem being encountered by Google Home users and the productive uses and solutions of this article’s situation. Hopefully, you found this article helpful and learned what you needed to know about how to solve this problem and stop the device from getting triggered with unauthorized voice recognition. By applying this fix, while watching videos and listening to music, you won’t encounter any sort of unneeded problem, and your device will work exceptionally.