The multitudes of Bluetooth speakers that have been left dormant in the wake of the influx of Google Home smart speakers are about to see new life, with Google announcing you can now pair Bluetooth speakers to Google Home devices.
The ability to connect your Google Home devices to Bluetooth speakers adds a multitude of benefits including the ability to control your Bluetooth speaker with your voice. You can also now add in a few Bluetooth speakers to a multi-room audio setup for full surround sound.
To set it up, simply open your Google Home app and pair your Bluetooth speaker. Once you’ve paired a Bluetooth speaker you can choose to have Home out put audio to the speaker, or add it into an audio group for multi-room audio.
The big winner here will be Google Home Mini owners who can now get a much bigger sound from their device, but you can also do this with the full Google Home – and the Google Home Max if you have one.
Nice headline, and article, Daniel. Pity the functionality you’re talking about isn’t there/doesn’t work!
Has anyone tried this yet?
Where is the option in the Home app to pair a Bluetooth speaker?
Not tried it yet, but under devices you can select a home device, then settings has ‘pair bluetooth device’. I’d guess it would be there.
Go to the speaker device properties and scroll down until you reach Default Music Speaker. The top option there is to pair a BT speaker.
However, I’ve been unable to add the speaker as a device to a group. Only cast-enabled speakers are appearing in the group selections.
Yep, I find the same thing. It doesn’t allow the home to be the output AS WELL AS the Bluetooth speaker. It just takes over from the home. So this would only be good if you have Bluetooth speakers that are better quality than your Google home.
“Allow it to join multi room audio groups”. I can also only set one default. Unable to select two or make a group with the Bluetooth speaker selected.
AP says the features may not be live for everyone yet so here’s hoping it’s yet to be enabled on my phone.