How To Play Google Home Through Bluetooth Speakers

Google Home is a very capable device but providing good quality audio through that mediocre speaker is not one of its strengths. It isn’t designed for audiophiles and certainly isn’t a home cinema setup but as a speaker, it is a little disappointing. Good job then that we can play audio from Google Home to a set of headphones or speakers using Bluetooth.

Google Home’s speakers are okay but if you have a Google Home Mini, you will know that they are severely lacking. If you have a decent set of Bluetooth headphones or speakers around, it is much more preferable to listen through those than the tinny little noisemaker that is Google Home. This tutorial will show you how.

Play Google Home through Bluetooth speakers

It’s a real shame that you can find millions of tracks using Google Home but playing them is such a let down. Fortunately, Google listened and while they have yet to improve the speaker within the device, you can use your own speakers or headphones as long as you have Bluetooth. It’s the next best thing to a better speaker I guess so it will have to do.

You will need a Google Home, Bluetooth speakers or headphones and the Google Home app for this to work. We will first need to pair the speakers to Google Home and then send audio to them. When I say speakers, I mean whatever Bluetooth output you’re planning to use.

1. Turn all your devices on.
2. Open the Google Home app on your phone and select Devices in the top corner.
3. Select the three dot menu icon and select Settings.
4. Select Paired Bluetooth Devices from the list.
5. Set your speakers to pairing mode.
6. Select Pair Bluetooth Speaker from the app and wait until they pair.

Once paired, the Google Home app will set them as the default output for all audio. If you don’t want that, reset the default output as you need. You will just need to repeat the above and manually select the speakers when you want to play using them rather than the built-in speaker.

You can pair as many sets of speakers or headphones as you like and they will all be accessible from the speakers list. Just tap the corresponding paired speaker when you want to change output and audio should switch accordingly. It’s quite an elegant system that works incredibly well.

Troubleshooting Bluetooth pairing with Google Home

I don’t know whether it’s Google Home or Bluetooth but once the connection is made, there are times when audio just won’t play through it. If you’re trying to play audio through speakers and it isn’t working despite everything looking okay, there are a couple of things you can try to fix them.

Your first stop is to open the Google Home app and make sure you have the correct speakers selected. You can pair multiple sets of headphones or speakers and it is all too easy to have the wrong output selected. Before troubleshooting, just make sure you have the correct output set. If you do and it still doesn’t work, try one of these:

Restart Google Home

One key way to get everything working again is to restart your Google Home. You can do it at the socket or with the app.

1. Open the Google Home app and select the Google Home.
2. Select the Home icon in the bottom left.
3. Select the gear icon to access Settings on the next page.
4. Select the three line menu icon on the next page.
5. Select Reboot and then confirm.

If that doesn’t work, re-pairing Google Home with your Bluetooth speakers might.

Re-pair speakers to Google Home

Re-pairing simply deletes the link between Google Home and your speakers and then sets it up again.

1. Open the Google Home app and select Devices in the top corner.
2. Select the three dot menu icon and select Settings.
3. Select Paired Bluetooth Devices from the list.
4. Select the speakers you want to remove.
5. Select the ‘X’ and select Unpair.

Now all you need to do is repeat the process above for pairing speakers with Google Home. Hopefully, once completed you should hear audio out of your selected speakers as normal.

Google Home is a great set of devices and the screen on the Google Home Hub is an excellent step forward. However the one thing the device is built around, the speaker, still leaves us wanting. It would be better to charge a little more for the device and give us a better quality speaker but for now, we can use our own Bluetooth speakers to play our music. That will do for now I guess.