Your Google Home speaker could be burning through your data in the background

1 week ago 2

The glow ring on the bottom of the Google Home Speaker.

Credit: Brady Snyder / MakeUseOf

Published Oct 20, 2026, 12:08 PM EDT

Hamed holds a B.A. in English Literature, graduating cum laude. He loves music, tech gadgets, and exploring the latest in the world of LLMs. He also enjoys tinkering with creative software such as Logic Pro, Final Cut Pro, and Photoshop.

A lifelong musician, Hamed plays multiple instruments, including guitar, bass, and oud. He is equally fascinated by smart-home technology and can happily spend hours geeking out over connected lights, speakers, sensors, and automations that make everyday life a little more interesting. When he isn’t covering the latest tech news, he explores more creative topics on his Medium blog, works on his music, or clears his head by riding his motorcycle.

Redditors have caught their Google Home Speaker downloading files continuously in the background. In the Reddit post, some users have complained about daily downloads accumulating to almost 700GB.

This appears to be affecting the newer $99 Home Speaker, which combines Gemini for Home and dedicated AI-processing hardware.

Your Google Home Speaker might be stuck in a download loop

But Google says there's a fix rolling out

While the exact cause hasn't been confirmed yet, the traffic patterns suggest that the speaker could be stuck trying to download an update without successfully installing it. From what we can tell, the latest Home Speaker is the affected device, while older Nest Hubs, Nest Minis, and Nest Audio devices do not appear to be facing this problem.

Google has acknowledged the problem and told 9to5Google that it has begun rolling out a fix that should address the issue for users. That said, the company didn't mention what triggered the downloads. If you have a monthly data cap, such a problem can give you a major yet unnecessary headache. Even if you don't have any data limits, constant downloading could compete with other devices for bandwidth.

If your network has already been struggling, your collection of smart-home gadgets might be choking your Wi-Fi even without one device downloading continuously.

You can also check whether your Google Home Speaker is misbehaving through your router's device-management page. If the numbers look abnormal, restarting the speaker could help, at least momentarily. Unplugging it or waiting for Google's fix to reach your device are the only two surefire ways to stop it from burning through your data in the background.

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