Some Google Home Speakers download hundreds of gigabytes in the background, and Google says a fix is rolling out

Owners of the new Google Home Speaker have been finding that it pulls huge amounts of data from Google's servers while sitting idle. 9to5Google reported the problem on 19 October 2026 (US time) after several user reports over the previous week, and Google told the site that "a fix is already rolling out that should address this for users." Google has not said what causes it or how many speakers are affected.

How much data

The numbers vary a lot from home to home. 9to5Google's own speaker, which had not been used for voice commands or music in the previous day, used 17 GB in 24 hours, 9.99 GB of it around 3 a.m. Pacific time. On 13 October the same speaker downloaded 41 GB, and its 30-day total came to 132 GB. A second, lightly used Home Speaker in another household used only 2 GB in a month.

The Reddit reports quoted by The Verge and Android Central are bigger. One user saw more than 200 GB a day. Another, with one old Google Home Mini and three of the new speakers used for under 20 minutes a day, says one speaker went through over 140 GB in a day and the three together used 6 TB in under a month. A third wrote that their speaker downloaded 20 GB in one day because "it kept downloading firmware and failing to install it."

That last report fits 9to5Google's guess that the speaker is stuck retrying a firmware update, but neither Google nor any of the outlets has confirmed the cause.

Which devices

So far the reports point at the new Google Home Speaker. 9to5Google did not see the problem on its other Google Home and Nest devices, including several Nest Hubs in the same house as the affected speaker, and an Android Central reader with a Nest Audio found nothing unusual. The Verge's Tom Warren checked his own Home Speaker and it was not affected.

What to check

On an unlimited fixed line this is mostly a nuisance. It matters on a capped plan, for example a mobile router or a satellite link, where a few speakers can eat the monthly allowance before anyone notices. Most routers show traffic per device. With Nest Wifi, 9to5Google points to the Wifi tab in the Google Home app, then Devices, the speaker and its usage graphs for 1, 7 or 30 days.

If the graph still shows tens of gigabytes a day after the fix reaches your speaker, it is worth reporting to Google, since the company has not said when the rollout will be complete.