Picture of the Google Home Mini smart speaker, top front view, shown in muted mic mode.

How to Reboot Google Home Mini

You may wish to reboot your Google Home Mini smart speaker if it starts behaving erratically, becomes non responsive to questions and commands, emits strange noises, breaks up, chirps unexpectedly, and so on. Always try a speaker restart first, as this often clears up many problems, and avoids the unnecessary action of hard resetting your speaker.

How to Reboot Google Home Mini Method One: The Local Method

If you’re near to the Google Home Mini speaker, you can just disconnect it from AC power, wait ten seconds, and then plug it back in. The unit will complete rebooting in less than a minute.

How to Reboot Google Home Mini Method Two: The Remote Method

However, if you’re far away from your speaker, such as upstairs from it, you can issue a reboot command via the Google Home app on your mobile device as follows.

This method depends on you having the Google Home app installed on your phone or tablet, and linked to the same Google account to which your Google Home Mini speaker is linked. Your phone or tablet must also be connected to the same local network as the speaker you’re rebooting.  If all of that is in place, then do the following, to effect a remote restart of your speaker.

1. Run the Google Home App on your Tablet or Phone

Firstly, we’re using an iPad Air computer tablet in this scenario. This app is located on page three of our iPad’s home screen, although yours may appear in a different location, depending on how many apps you have installed as well as how you might have arranged them.

Picture of the Google Home App entry, as shown on the iOS home screen.
Google Home App entry, as shown on the iOS home screen.

Upon running this app, the Google home screen appears, as follows.

Picture of the Google Home app on iOS, displaying the Home screen, with the Hamburger control highlighted.
Google Home app on iOS, displaying the Home screen, with the Hamburger control highlighted.

2. Tap the  Hamburger  Menu Control

Secondly, find this control menu link in the top left corner of the Google Home app Home screen, as pointed at in the previous picture by the pink arrow. This brings up the main menu as shown next.

Picture of the app displaying its main menu, with the devices item highlighted.
The app displaying its main menu, with the devices item highlighted.

3. Tap the   Devices   Menu Item

This brings up a list of your local Google Home devices that have been configured on the current Google account, as shown next for our case.





4. Find the Google Home Mini Speaker you Wish to Reboot

Do that by scrolling down through the list until you find it.  We currently only have one of these. So we found ours straight away, as shown below.

Picture of the speaker entry in the -Devices- list, with its Device Menu location highlighted.
The speaker showing in the Devices list, with its Device Menu location highlighted.

5. Tap the Device’s   Hamburger   Menu Control

Find this control in the top right corner of its card, pointed at by the purple arrow in the previous picture.

The Mini speaker’s control menu then appears, as shown next.

Picture of the device control menu, with the Reboot option for the speaker highlighted.
The device control menu for the speaker, with the -Reboot- option highlighted.

6. Tap the   Reboot   Menu Item

We’ve circled this in purple in the last picture. The   Reboot Confirmation   dialog then displays, something like that shown in the next picture.

Picture of the Google Home App, displaying the Google Home Mini speaker Reboot Confirmation dialog box, with the Reboot option highlighted. Reboot Google Home Mini.
Google Home App, Displaying the Google Home Mini Speaker Reboot Confirmation Dialog Box, with the Reboot option highlighted. Reboot Google Home Mini.

7. Tap the   REBOOT   Link in the Reboot Confirmation  Dialog Box

This initiates a remote reboot of your Google Home Mini speaker, closes the reboot confirmation dialog box, and returns you to the Devices List screen. Your Mini will temporarily disappear from the Devices List screen while it reboots. It will reappear once the restart finishes.

Note the light patterns on your Mini.  They should indicate that a reboot is in progress within thirty seconds of your issuing the reboot command, as shown next.

Picture of the smart speaker rebooting, showing white scanning lights pattern. Reboot Google Home Mini.
The smart speaker, rebooting, showing white scanning lights pattern. Reboot Google Home Mini.

8. Finished !

Finally, once the speaker again appears in the Devices list in the Google Home app, and the lights on the speaker have gone out, reboot is complete. Then you can try some commands and questions.

Hopefully, rebooting solves any issues you were experiencing. But if not, you can always try more drastic measures, such as hard resetting your Mini, and then setting it up again. Good luck.

Related Posts

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    4. Rebooting an Unresponsive iPod Touch Player
    5. How to Reboot Samsung Galaxy J7 Sky Pro Phone

Other Posts About the Google Home Mini Smart Speaker

    1. How to Set Up Spotify on Google Home Mini
    2. Google Home Mini Power Adapter Specs
    3. How to Turn Down Google Home Mini Volume
    4. Google Home Mini Bluetooth Pairing Instructions
    5. How to Pause Google Home Mini

References for How to Reboot the Google Home Mini Speaker

    1. Restarting Google Home, from Google Support

Revision History

    • 2020-05-10: Added the Other Posts About… section.
    • 2019-05-04: Added key word targeting for ‘Reboot Google Home Mini’. Added tags and deleted ad code as well.
    • 2017-11-05: Originally published.