You may want to know how to restart the Google Home Mini if it behaves erratically, becomes non responsive to questions and commands, locks up, emits strange noises, breaks up, chirps unexpectedly, and so on. Always try a restart first, as this often clears up many problems, and avoids the unnecessary action of hard resetting. Note that restarting Google Home Mini differs from resetting it.
How to Restart Google Home Mini Method One: The Local Method
If you’re near to the Google Home Mini, you can just disconnect it from AC power, wait ten seconds, and then plug it back in. The unit will complete restarting in less than a minute.
How to Restart a Google Home Mini Method Two: The Remote Method, Through the Google Home App
But if you’re far away from your Mini, such as upstairs from it, you can issue a restart 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 is linked. Your phone or tablet must also be connected to the same local network as the unit you’re restarting. If all of that is in place, then do the following, to initiate a remote restart.
1. Run the Google Home App on your Tablet or Other Mobile Device
We’re using an iPad Air computer tablet in this scenario. We find this app on page three of our iPad’s home screen, although yours may appear in a different place, depending on how many apps you have installed as well as how you’ve arranged them.
Upon running this app, the Google home screen appears, as follows.
2. Tap the Hamburger Menu Control
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.
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 you Wish to Restart
Locate the speaker by scrolling down through the list until you find it. We currently only have one. So we found ours straight away, as shown below.
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 picture just above.
The Google Home Mini control menu then pops up, as shown next.
6. Tap the Reboot Menu Item
We’ve circled this in purple in the last picture. The Restart Confirmation dialog then appears, something like that shown in the next picture.
7. Tap the REBOOT Link in the Restart Confirmation Dialog Box
This begins a remote restart of your Google Home Mini, closes the restart confirmation dialog box. The app then returns you to the Devices List screen. Your Mini then temporarily disappears from the Devices List screen while it restarts. Later, it reappears, once the restart Google Home Mini routine finishes.
Note the light patterns on your Google Mini. They show that a restart is in progress within thirty seconds of your issuing the restart command, as shown next.
8. Finished with How to Restart Google Home Mini !
Once the Google Home Mini again appears in the Devices list in the Google Home app, and the lights on the speaker go out, restart has wrapped up successfully. Then, you can try some commands and questions.
Hopefully, restarting has fixed any issues plaguing your Mini. But if not, you can always try more drastic measures, such as hard resetting your Mini, and then setting it up again.