9 things Google Nest speakers can do that you didn’t know

As usual with Google Nest speakers, everything is straightforward and intuitive, and you’re not going to have to plough through a lot of complicated menus or settings screens to follow these tips. They will work whether you have a Google Nest Mini or a Google Nest Audio smart speaker.

To try these tips and tricks, you need to have already set up your Google Nest speaker on your home wi-fi, and have the Google Home app for Android, iOS or iPadOS installed on a phone or a tablet.

If you’ve got several Nest speakers set up, you can use a feature called Broadcast: this basically turns your speaker into an intercom system, so you can announce to everyone else at home that dinner’s ready or there’s someone at the front door.

Just say to your speaker: “Hey Google, broadcast…” followed by your message, and by default it will go to every Nest speaker on the same wi–fi network, but you can also specify a particular room where one of your speakers is. 

Your Google Nest speaker can help out if you remember something you need to buy – just say: “Hey Google, add [item] to my shopping list”, and it’s taken care of for you, with no need to find your phone or a piece of paper.

When you’re out and about at the shops, open the Google Home app, then tap Settings > Google Assistant > Manage all Assistant settings > Notes & Lists, > Shopping Lists.

You’ll be able to manually add items from this screen as well as tick them off when you’ve bought them. 

If you have a couple of Google Nest speakers and listen to a lot of music through them, you might want to set them up as a stereo pair for a more immersive audio experience.

From the Google Home app, open the Devices tab, tap on one of the speakers you want to pair, then tap the cog icon (top right). Choose Audio, Stereo pair, and then Next, and you’ll be able to choose the two speakers you want to link together. Any music then played through the speakers will be split into stereo channels. 

You can get your Google Nest speaker to reduce the volume of its responses and the brightness of its LEDs at night. In the Google Home app, tap Devices then your speaker, then the cog icon (top right) – choose Notifications and Digital Wellbeing, then Night mode to see your options.

You can turn the feature on and off manually using the toggle switch at the top, or set it to run on a timed schedule through the week. Further down, you can set the night mode volume and brightness levels.

If you want some ambient noise in the background to help you relax, study, or sleep, then your Google Nest speaker can lend a hand. Say something like: “Hey Google, play ambient noise” to see what you get – we’ve found that “white noise”, “forest sounds”, “ocean waves” and “thunderstorm sounds” all work.

There may well be more that you can find if you experiment with a few different commands (Google isn’t specific when it comes to the ambient sounds that its Nest speakers know). 

The Google Nest speaker comes with its own equaliser settings that you can tweak if you want your music to have a little more bass response or a little more high end in the mix.

These settings aren’t difficult to find either: if you open the Devices tab in the Google Home app on your phone and tablet, then choose your speaker, and you’ll see an icon at the top that looks like a series of sliders. Tap on this to find the controls for bass and treble, which can be adjusted via the sliders.

You can use your Google Nest speaker to translate between languages. Try saying: “Hey Google, translate into…“ followed by a language, and you can then feed it phrases to translate into that language.

Another option is to say: “Hey Google, how do you say [word or phrase] in [language]?” and you’ll get a spoken response back.

It’s not clear just how many languages Google Assistant on the Nest speaker supports, but it’s not easy to catch it out with a language it doesn’t know. 

Routines are bunches of actions that the Google Nest speaker will do one after the other. So, for example, you could get it to sound an alarm, tell you the news, and turn the bedroom light on when you say “good morning” to your speaker.

Routines are set in the Google Home app, and if you open it and tap Automations then Add, you can see the possibilities and some suggestions. Routines can also be triggered at a specific time of day as well as by a voice command. 

Misplaced your phone somewhere around the house? Your Google Nest speaker can help you find it. Just say: “Hey Google, find my phone” or “Hey Google, ring my phone”, and it will make a sound, even if it’s in Do Not Disturb mode.

The phone must be turned on and on the same wi–fi network as your speaker, and it must have the Find My Device feature enabled in the phone settings – you can learn more about this and how it works here.