The beauty of having Google smart home devices is connecting your whole house in a network of home automation awesomeness. But when it comes to stereo speakers, that wasn’t always possible. At first, only Google Home Max could pair with stereo speakers, and then Google added the Nest Mini, which was a bummer if you had another smart speaker in the Google lineup. Over the weekend, though, Android Police discovered that Google has been quietly making their other smart speakers pairing compatible with stereo speakers. Now, you can pair your stereo speaker system with Google Home and Google Home Mini speakers, too.
To set up a pairing, turn on your non-Google speaker and make sure it’s in pairing mode. Open up your Google Home app on your phone and tap on the Google speaker you want to pair. Once that’s selected, tap on the Settings, which is a little gear icon. Next, tap on Speaker pair and choose which speakers you want to pair, then pick a left and right channel (the app will help you choose), give the pairing a name and assign it a room. That’s all there is to it.
Now you will be able to control both speakers at the same time. You can go into the speaker group’s settings to adjust bass, treble and balance by going to Speaker Pair Settings > Speaker Pair. Play around with the settings until you find a sound you like. Don’t forget, you can keep adding on speakers and Google speakers to fill your whole room with surround sound.
You can use your regular Google Assistant voice commands to control the volume, what you listen to and when to pause or play the music. When you use Google Assistant only the speaker that’s set up as “left” will listen, so keep that in mind when you’re using them. You don’t want to be yelling “Hey, Google!” to the wrong speaker for 10 minutes.
Need help choosing the right speakers to fill out your home sound system? Check out our picks for the best Bluetooth speakers for 2019 and How to buy speakers: A beginner’s guide to home audio.
