Google Home made users say the weirdest thing to set an alarm, but that’s over now

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Google Home has had a busy August, with Google rolling out several updates that make Gemini for Home smarter and add new capabilities to its smart home platform. But amid all those improvements, something as basic as setting an alarm suddenly stopped working for some users. Thankfully, Google has now confirmed that the issue affecting Nest and other Gemini-powered smart home devices has been fixed.

For several days, users on Reddit reported that commands such as “Hey Google, set an alarm for 8:30 AM” would simply be ignored. Some found that alarms worked when set for an exact hour, while others had to ask Google to set an alarm first and then provide the time when prompted. One odd workaround involved saying “Hey Google, hi” before giving the alarm command.

The problem wasn’t limited to Google’s Nest hardware. A user with a Lenovo smart display reported the same behavior, while reports indicate it affected devices running both the older Google Assistant and the newer Gemini for Home. That points to a Google-side issue rather than a problem with a particular Nest device.

The timing is notable, too. The alarm problem appeared shortly after Google’s major Google Home August update , which introduced new features and a smarter Gemini for Home experience. There’s no indication that the two are related, though.

Google acknowledged the problem earlier today, saying it was investigating reports of alarms not setting. A few hours later, it followed up with a fix: “We’ve resolved the issue impacting setting Alarms.”

The original Reddit poster has since confirmed that alarms are working again. Our own testing across several Nest speakers also found that alarms are currently setting and triggering correctly. While we didn’t encounter the bug ourselves, the tests confirm that the functionality is working as expected as of this writing.

If your Google Home speaker or smart display was affected, you can now go back to simply asking Google to set an alarm for your preferred time.