Your old Google Nest speaker just got a lot smarter

If you’ve already got a Nest Audio or a Google Home speaker around the house, it’s about to get a whole lot smarter. Google has just announced that its new voice assistant, called Gemini, is rolling out to most smart speakers, including older models. You can sign up through the Google Home app, and Google says most people in the US will get access within 24 hours.

Gemini is a significant upgrade over Google Assistant. It’s designed to understand more natural questions, like “Play that song from the movie where they go to space to stop an asteroid,” and it’ll figure it out. You can also tell it to turn off specific lights without using their exact names, and you don’t have to say “Hey Google” every time you want to talk. Just say “Let’s chat” and keep going with what’s called Gemini Live.

There’s also a new speaker on the way, called the Google Home Speaker, coming in spring 2026. It looks nice and has some fun colors, but here’s the thing—it doesn’t really do anything new. If you’ve already got a working Google speaker, you’ll get all the same Gemini features, so there’s not much reason to buy the new one unless you really want the updated design.

Gemini’s also bringing some cool features to Nest cameras, like describing what it sees and giving you a daily recap. Heads up, though—those features require a Google Home Premium subscription. Currently, the voice assistant upgrade is only available to people in the US, but Google states that other countries will receive it early next year.