Google Home Mini speaker rebooting, showing white scanning lights pattern.
You may experience WiFi connection errors when booting your Google Home Mini smart speaker. Or, the unit may not show up in the Home app. Both problems occur when the speaker stops connecting to your wireless network. To see it and use it, the Mini must be connected though. These situations can occur if you’ve changed your WiFi network name (SSID) or the network password, but have not yet updated your Google Home Mini device to match. This post details the Setup WiFi on Google Home Mini, to account for new WiFi routers or other wireless settings changes.
We assume here that the Google Home App is installed and linked to your Google account, as ours has in the following demo.
The screenshots below were taken from an Apple iPad Air. However, a similar Google Home app for Android is also available from the Google Play store.
Now, to the procedure.
If not already operating, plug the speaker into a power source, as you’ll need to access the network parameters in its memory, as we detail below. Now you won’t be able to change these settings without AC power, as they are inaccessible in the Home app unless the speaker is powered on. The next picture shows the Google Home Mini speaker connected to AC power via the included AC adapter.
Wait until your speaker finishes booting before proceeding to the next step.
Avoid being further than fifteen to twenty feet away, for maximum setup speed and minimum errors. The app and your speaker require Bluetooth on your mobile device be enabled, so that settings that you establish in the app prior to when the speaker connects to WiFi are communicated to the speaker.
Follow the instructions for your particular mobile device to accomplish this. This is necessary in order for the Google Home app to successfully connect your speaker to the new WiFi network. For example, if you’re planning to connect your speaker to the AABBCC WiFi network, then you should connect your mobile device to that same WiFi network (AABBCC).
This app gives you access to your current Google devices and settings, and allows you to change them as needed.
The app is located somewhere on the home screen pages, depending on where you might have moved it. On our iPad Air, the app is on home page three, as shown next, pointed at by the purple arrow.
We got the following screen at Google Home app startup.
After a short period, you’re taken to the app’s home screen. Ours displayed as follows.
This item (the three horizontal stacked lines) is located at top left corner of the Home screen, as displayed in the previous picture. The app’s main menu then displays as shown in the next picture.
In the main (hamburger) menu, find the Devices item, as pointed at by the purple arrow in the previous screenshot. You may have to swipe up in the menu area in order to scroll the Devices item into view.
Depending on whether or not your speaker is connected currently to a WiFi network, different screens will appear at this point. We address each of the possible scenarios as follows.
If your speaker is currently connected and functioning correctly to an access point in your home network, you’ll then see a screen similar to the screenshot in step 6. Go there for further instructions in this case.
If your speaker is powered up but not connected to any WiFi network, then you’ll see a screen like the one pictured at the top of step 8. Go there for specific instructions that address this case. However, if it is powered up and connected successfully to a WiFi network, continue with step 7.
This shows that your speaker is online and can accept voice commands and questions. This is the case if you have multiple WiFi networks in your home, and you wish to disconnect your speaker from the current network, and connect it instead to another of them. Maybe you wish to move the speaker from the first to the second floor, and would like to connect it to the second floor access point if you have one, because its WiFi signal works better up there. In short, you’re moving your speaker from one working WiFi network to another.
We pointed at the ellipses with the purple arrow in the last picture. This brings up the speaker’s control menu, as shown in the next picture.
Your speaker’s Settings screen then appears. Then, scroll down the screen until you find the Device Settings section in this menu. We’ve done that as shown in the next screen shot.
The WiFi setting here displays the wireless network to which the speaker is currently connected, as circled.
The WiFi setting is circled in the last picture.
This then brings up the Forget This Network prompt screen, as shown next.
In this scenario, we wish to disconnect from the 937T681J4059H_2G_Guest network, and connect to the 937T681J4059H_5G network. Both are in range and available to the Google Home Mini speaker.
As shown next, our speaker is currently connected to the 937T681J4059H_2G_Guest network. We want to forget that network. So we do so by tapping the red bar.
The Forget Network Confirmation screen then appears, as displayed next.
Then, tap the Forget This WiFi Network blue link. as pointed at by the arrow in the previous picture. The app then displays the Forgetting WiFi network screen, as shown next.
Executing this step disconnects your speaker from its current WiFi network, as well as forces it to forget the settings it retains in its memory for that network (SSID, security type, and password et al).
After a short pause, you are returned to the Home screen in the Google Home app, as shown next.
Find the hamburger control on the Google Home App Home screen, near the top left corner.
The main menu then displays as shown in the next picture.
In the main (hamburger) menu, find the Devices item, as pointed at by the purple arrow in the previous screenshot. You’ll now get the same screenshot as covered in step 7.
If your speaker is offline (i.e. not able to connect to any in-range WiFi networks), or if you previously disconnected it from WiFi as described in step 6, then you’ll see something like the next screen.
Your speaker may not be able to connect to a wireless network for example, if you have just replaced the WiFi router / access point that your speaker had been connecting to previously, but you used a different network name (SSID). In that case, the old WiFi network is no longer “on the air.” But the Google speaker cannot yet connect to the new one, as it does not yet have valid network SSID and password for it.
The screen above shows no WiFi because it flags your speaker as needing setup. Without a WiFi connection, the Google Home app knows about your speaker via Bluetooth only. This is why, when you setup WiFi on Google Home Mini, you must have your mobile device within Bluetooth range of the speaker.
Further, with the speaker not connected to any internet network, Google Home will be unable to respond to any questions / commands directed at your speaker, except to say, “I can’t find your WiFi network. You can reconnect to WiFi from your Google Home app, under Devices, then Setup.” This audio message from the speaker is a sure sign that it is not connected to any WiFi networks currently.
Reminder: Be sure your tablet is within several feet of the speaker. Otherwise, setup may fail.
If all goes well, the Google Home app will search for your speaker and attempt to connect to it, as shown in the next screen.
When the speaker makes a Bluetooth connection successfully, the Google Home app then plays a short chord sound on the Mini that it connected to.
Then it shows the following screen.
The app then asks you where you’re placing this device in your home. Here you have numerous pre-defined choices, as well as the option to “write in” your own location name choice. In this demo however, we’re going simple, and specifying “Office” as our speaker location, as shown in the following screens.
Here, we tapped “Office,” and the screen then changes to display the “Office” selection checked, as shown next.
The app then takes you to the Choose your WiFi network screen, as shown next. In our case, we’re going to pick the 937T681J4059H_5G network, as pointed at by the purple arrow in the picture that immediately follows.
We did so, and then the screen in the next picture appears, showing our choice has changed color from black to blue.
This brings up the “Enter WiFi Password” prompt for the chosen WiFi network above, as shown next.
We entered ours, as shown next.
You may also choose to check the -Use This WiFi Network To Set Up Future Devices- option, if you want this network’s password to be remembered the next time you set up a Google Home device. This eliminates the need to type in the password again.
The Google Home app then attempts to connect to the selected WiFi network, and it display this activity as shown in the next screen shot.
After a short pause, the Mini speaker connects to your chosen WiFi network, and the Google Home app displays the following screen to indicate that the speaker connected successfully.
After a short pause, the Google Home app again displays its home screen, as follows.
You have now managed to WiFi setup on Google Home Mini. That is, your speaker now connects to a working WiFi network. To check it out, ask it the time or weather. If the assistant answers, then you know that the new connection is okay.
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