Google Home’s Spring 2026 update brings a new camera experience and Gemini 3.1
Google’s Spring 2026 update for Google Home overhauls the camera experience with animated event previews and faster navigation, and upgrades the voice assistant to Gemini 3.1.
Google has rolled out its Spring 2026 update for Google Home, bringing a new camera experience, a Gemini 3.1 upgrade, and expanded automation support.
The biggest change is to the camera side of the app. Event feeds now show zoomed-in animated previews instead of static thumbnails, so you can actually see what triggered an alert at a glance. There’s a redesigned event details page that keeps the video player visible while you scroll, faster navigation, smoother scrubbing, and new 10-second skip buttons.
You can also swipe between Timeline and Events, or pull down to resize the player. Familiar face detection is getting cleaned up too, with the system now automatically removing blurry or low-quality images from your face library. AI-generated event descriptions are coming to older Nest cameras as well, though that feature requires a Google Home Premium subscription.
On the assistant side, early access users are being upgraded to Gemini 3.1, which adds better reasoning for complex, multi-step commands. You can string together multiple requests in a single go without the assistant losing track.
The update also expands what you can automate. New options cover security systems, robot vacuums, lighting controls, appliance states, and device health monitoring. Two more features are coming soon to public preview: Ask Home on the web, which brings camera history search and automation setup to desktop, and improved notifications with quick action buttons for instant device control.
