Google Nest Doorbells suffer mild identity crisis, start speaking with new accents

Google Home has had a flare-up of issues in recent days. Most recently, Voice Match has been struggling to identify who’s speaking. As Google toils away on a fix for that problem, another odd bug has shown up unannounced. This issue specifically affects the Nest Doorbell.

Gemini for Home supports up to 10 languages, including English, French, German, Spanish, and Japanese. You can even pick a preferred accent, like US or UK English. While there may be some people who prefer to hear accents other than their own, most people tend to pick a voice that uses the same accent they do. Wouldn’t it be a bit jarring if your assistant suddenly started talking in your language but with a different accent?

According to reports on Reddit, this is happening to Nest Doorbell users overseas. One user in France explains that they have French set up on all of their Google Home devices, and Gemini responds in French with a French accent for all of those interactions. However, when someone uses their Nest Doorbell, the announcement is spoken in French, but with a US accent.

Users in the UK are experiencing the same issue. Several Nest Doorbell owners report that their doorbell announcements have inexplicably switched to a US English accent. In every other Google Home device interaction, the assistant is still using a British voice.

Another user claims they managed to fix the problem for Google Assistant with the help of Google’s support team. They claim the issue can be fixed by setting US English as your secondary language. After a few seconds, delete it, and everything should be working again. It’s unclear if this solution has worked for others experiencing this problem.

We have reached out to Google about this strange problem. This article will be updated when new information becomes available. Until then, let us know if you have also run into this bug.