Google Home Speaker pulls huge background downloads, fix rolling out

Some owners of the new Google Home Speaker are finding that it downloads hundreds of gigabytes of data in the background. Google has acknowledged the problem and says a fix is already rolling out.

Several reports over the past week describe the speaker continuously pulling data from company servers. 9to5Google's own unit is one example: it had not been used for voice commands or media streaming for a day, yet it consumed 17 GB in 24 hours. At 3 a.m. PT alone it downloaded 9.99 GB, and given the timing, this could be related to failed attempts to download device firmware.

The numbers on one speaker

On October 13 the same speaker downloaded 41 GB. Over 30 days its total came to 132 GB.

It is not clear how widespread the issue is. A second, lightly used Home Speaker in a different household downloaded only 2 GB in a month. Other Google Home and Nest devices do not show the problem, including several Nest Hubs in the same house as the affected speaker.

For people with several Home Speakers on a limited data plan, the downloads could easily exceed the cap, as some owners have already found. Some users have reported background consumption of more than 100 GB in a day, which matters most on fixed plans.

How to check your own speaker

Most routers show how much data a given device has used. On Nest Wifi, open the Google Home app, go to the Wifi tab at the top, then Devices, select the speaker and open Device usage graphs, which can be switched between 1-day, 7-day and 30-day views.

In a statement to 9to5Google, the company acknowledged the issue and said "a fix is already rolling out that should address this for users." Google has not said what the Gemini-powered speaker was trying to download or what caused the problem.

Source: 9to5Google