Original Google Home smart speaker, front left view, sitting on desk.
All smart speakers in the Google Home family now support Bluetooth. They can act as BT speakers themselves. This allows you to play audio from your phone or other mobile device through them. Indeed, you get better sound quality through a Google speaker. So in this demo, we prepare the Google Home to act as a BT speaker. For that, we show how to put the Google Home in pairing mode. This makes it discoverable by other BT devices.
When you enable pairing mode on any wireless speaker, the unit broadcasts its name. Plus, it sends out other connection info over the Bluetooth airwaves. Then, nearby BT devices can pick up these signals. They then can connect with the speaker. So, to connect, you first must put the Google Home in pairing mode. Here’s how to do that.
We assume that you have set up and connected your Google Home to your Wi-Fi network. You’ll also need the Home app on a mobile device. You should connect this app to your Google account. Then finally, set up your Google Home speaker there. Do this first, so you can access the speaker’s Bluetooth settings pages.
Further, make sure that your mobile device connects to the same wireless network as your speaker. If it isn’t, you won’t be able to manage the speaker’s settings.
Take care of these details now, if not already done. Then, once complete, proceed with the steps below to enable Bluetooth pairing mode on your smart speaker.
On our iPad, this app appears on the third home page, as pictured next.
The app Home screen then displays, as pictured next.
Find the hamburger control up at the top left corner of the Google Home app home screen. This brings up the main menu window, as shown next.
This brings up the list of Google Home devices that the app knows about, as shown next. We’ve scrolled down the list of in-network devices and located our Mini, as shown.
This item we pointed at with the purple arrow in the last picture. The hamburger menu opens, as shown in the next picture.
The Settings menu item is in the hamburger menu as shown in the last picture. It has the purple circle around it. Then, find the Device Settings screen for the specific Google Home speaker. See an example of this in the last screenshot. These specific setting options appear on the screen shown next. In our case, that device, the Google Home Mini, we named Office Speaker.
Note that we’ve scrolled down to the Device Settings section on this screen. We found the Paired Bluetooth Devices option, as circled in the next picture.
We circled the Bluetooth Devices menu item in the last picture. The Paired Bluetooth Devices screen then appears as shown next. There, we can choose a Bluetooth device from a list of devices that we’ve previously paired with. Since we have never paired with any, the screen is all but entirely blank.
This puts the Google Home device we’re working with into pairing mode. That is, it will now show up on other in-range devices when they scan for Bluetooth devices. Confirmation shows as a black bar quickly appearing at the bottom of the Paired Bluetooth Devices screen, as shown next.
You may now scan for this speaker in the Bluetooth settings on the device you desire to pair with it. Then, it will show up with the same name as you named it when you set it up. We find our speaker in our iPad Bluetooth settings, for example, as shown next.
Done! You may indeed place your smart speaker into Bluetooth pairing mode. So you may now connect to it on your source device.
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