If your Google Home is constantly disconnecting from Wi-Fi, your Wi-Fi is too slow and connexion drops, there are 2 possible reasons: Either your Wi-Fi connection is too weak or there is interference from other devices or networks. To fix the problem try to:
- Relocate your Google Home
- Split your Wi-Fi devices between your router’s 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands
- Amplify the wifi signal with a wifi repeater
- Change for a better router
Contents
1- Relocate your Google Home
A very possible likely solution is to change the location of your Google Home and bring it closer to the router or box.
This should improve the connection without a doubt.
By moving your Google Home closer to the router, the WiFi signal strength will improve. The closer you get, the stronger the signal gets.
Unfortunately, despite bringing your Google Home closer to the box or router, it may continue to disconnect, despite having already divided the devices between the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz frequencies.
If this is your case, the problem can still be identified and fixed. Phew! You will simply have to look a little further for the causes.
2- Split the devices between the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz WiFi bands
Google Home connects via Wi-Fi via the 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz frequency band (depending on proximity to the box). These frequencies are also used by other devices in your home.
Your game consoles, smartphones, laptops, tablets, cameras, smart TVs and others are mostly connected to WiFi in your home and consume bandwidth.
In some cases, interference can occur and cause the Google Home Assistant to disconnect from the Wifi network.
In old apartments, neighbors’ devices can cause interference issues with your Google Home.
A solution is to split your Google devices to your router’s 5 GHz band and connect the other devices to 2.4 GHz.
This way, less devices will be connected on the same frequency. I will limit interference. The 5 Ghz frequency being more powerful at short distance, this should improve the Wifi connection of your Google Home as long as it is not too far from your internet router.
3- Use a WiFi repeater (extender)
You might need a Wifi booster or extender, but first, check your WiFi network.
If your Google Home is still disconnecting after these first 2 recommendations, you need to measure the strength of your WiFi in different places in your house to see if your WiFi is too weak.
The most common interference is your Neighbors’ WiFi connections which obviously use the same universal frequencies.
How do I know if my WiFi is too weak or if the problem is with the neighbors’ WiFi?
It’s simple, there are free online tools that allow you to test all of this… and without your neighbor’s knowing.
For this, we will use a free mobile application to analyze the signal strength of WiFi. We will test WiFi strength and interference using the WiFiman mobile app.
Test network with WiFiman App
Follow these steps:
- Download the “ Ubiquiti WiFiman” smartphone application (iPhone or Android)
- Accept the location authorization request (recommended for more accurate data)
- Ignore the request to install to a second device
- Put yourself next to your google home
- Click “Start Speed Test”
You will thus obtain the speed of your connection even if it is not the only thing we are interested in here.
You can repeat the test at different places in the house to know the status of the connection at specific places.
By clicking on “wireless” at the bottom, you will see the internet routers and networks detected by your device. You hope your connection is the first in this list.
Ideally, the signal strength should be a green colored number. Which indicates that the Wifi connection is very good. An orange number indicates an average connection, a red number a weak connection and a gray box indicates that the device is detected but the connection is lost because it is too far or too weak.
Interpretation of signal strength results:
- green number: very good Wifi reception of the device (example: -42 dBm)
- orange number: average connection (example: -68 dBm)
- red number: weak connection (example: -80 dBm)
- gray dashes: connection detected but interrupted (example: — dBm)
What I really like is the possibility of knowing the approximate distance of the neighbors’ routers.
For example, by clicking on a device from the list above, we can see that the detected Freebox-81EBAD device of a neighbor is about 172 meters from my smartphone (564 feet).
Generally you don’t need to look at this detail, the list here shows devices with sufficient signal strength to understand if the problem is from the neighbors or not.
If one of your neighbors has a more powerful device than yours, you can add a WiFi repeater to improve WiFi power in your home. You will find routers on Amazon.
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4- Change router
There’s one last possible issue that’s causing your Google Home to disconnect, but this one isn’t easy to diagnose.
If despite all these tips you still have internet connection problems with Google Home, it is likely that the problem comes from your box or router, even if the router is new.
New routers have 2 WiFi frequency bands: 2.4 Ghz and 5 Ghz. But not all are able to manage dozens of devices efficiently. This is why, while a router can easily manage 5 to 10 devices, some routers are almost useless when it comes to managing tons of devices at the same time.
As a result, Wi-Fi may lose connections when you reach the limits.
If you have dozens of smart device in a smarthome, you should consider a good router that suits for smart homes.
In my article on the best routers for smart homes, you will find good advice.
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Wrapping it up
You are not the only one having regular WiFi disconnections from Google Home, many other people have this problem and get to fix it.
This problem is usually caused by a weak WiFi signal, interference from other devices, neighboring Wi-Fi networks or cheap routers.
The first solution is to bring your Google Home closer to the router to improve the signal.
The second best thing to try is to split your WiFi devices between your 2.4 and 5 GHz bands, favoring the 5 Ghz network for Google Home.
A third solution is to add a WiFi repeater in the house to extend and improve the WiFi signal in the rest of the house.
Finally, if despite all these tips the disconnections continue, consider changing the router to a model suitable for smart homes. Your current router is probably too weak and cheap and not capable of managing multiple devices.
