‘Ok Google, turn on the lights’ is mysteriously broken for many users

Yesterday evening, as I went to bed, I told my Google Nest Audio, “Hey Google, turn off all the lights.” Normally, this is one of the easiest commands, and my success rate with it is better than many other commands that continuously fail and irritate me. But this time, I just got back silence. So I shrugged, thinking it’s a glitch, reached out to the Hue button on my bedside table, and long-pressed it to turn off all my lights.

Today, though, my Android Authority colleague Luka pointed out to me dozens of Reddit threads from users who are also having trouble controlling their lights. Turns out this wasn’t a simple glitch but a widespread issue affecting many Google Home and Assistant/Gemini users.

Google has already acknowledged this issue and replied to all of these threads with:

Hey all,

We’re aware of an issue with using voice commands to control some lights. We’ll share an update as soon as possible, thanks for your patience.

The timing, though, couldn’t be any worse, with the entire Google Home and Assistant platform under fire from lots of frustrated users due to incessant glitches. Chief Product Officer for Google Home and Nest, Anish Kattukaran, acknowledged the worsening experience and promised “a long term solution that provides better reliability and capability.” Anish also said Google has been “actively working on major improvements for sometime [sic] and will have more to share in the fall.”

If you can’t wait until fall to turn off your lights, understandably, Reddit has a list of suggestions that include telling your speaker, “Hey Google, sync all devices,” which forces Google to re-check all of the services you’ve linked to it (like Hue, LifX, Govee, Lutron, Ikea, etc…). If that doesn’t work, you might want to go a bit more nuclear and completely disconnect the service providing your lights, reconnect it, and add back all the lights to their respective rooms. That seems to do it for most people affected by the bug.

Otherwise, you can just wait. The bug has resolved for me without any tricks, and I’m able to control my lights again with my voice.