Google Home gets a battery-efficient widget and camera fixes

Published Sep 16, 2026, 7:22 PM EDT Chandra Steele has been writing about tech for the entirety of her journalism career. She loves making tough topics easy to understand. Before joining Android Police, Chandra was senior features writer at PCMag where she did everything from interviewing Jeff Goldblum to explaining crypto. Sign in to your Android Police account Google Home is having a big day, first with the announcement that it’s inviting outside AI agents into its ecosystem, and now with updates and fixes to the Home app and Gemini for Home voice assistant. A more efficient widget The Google Home widget is now more respectful of your phone’s battery life. It’s been optimized to pause background updates and polling when a phone's screen is powered off, locked, or running a screensaver. When you unlock your phone, the widget will refresh. This update also saves battery life in any connected cameras. Camera fixes Cameras overall also got some fixes. First up is an improvement in the live stream tile’s reliability. There were instances when the livestream tile would turn black when returning from the full-screen camera view back to the Favorites tab until it was manually scrolled. Users should now notice smoother video timeline scrolling past unrecorded or offline gaps. Those using iOS devices got a fix for an issue where tapping the "Live" button during recorded events would pause playback instead. Overall quality improvements The update makes a few things run smoother. This includes more reliable multi-account switching, with fewer “Home not found” errors and preference resets. Smart devices now have an easier path to setup, in part thanks to the elimination of stalls during Wi-Fi pairing. Clearing smoke alarm and carbon monoxide detector notifications should now allow for the correct device status to appear in the Google Home app. One of the biggest fixes is for Google TV. People were reporting crashes on startup, which should now be fixed. No more gray tiles The update takes care of an issue of grayed-out detector tiles for online sensors, cameras, and smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. Prior to the fix, tiles were grayed out after returning from device controller screens. Google said that this update ensures that device tiles accurately reflect their active status without needing to reload.