The moment you can talk to something in your house and it can do everything from playing your favourite music, to controlling the lights and activating your microwave, you know the future really is here.
However, you do also have to accept that there is a device in your home that is listening for its “wake word”, which means it’s listening to you pretty much all the time. This fact can make people a little uneasy.
The good news is that the Google Home will not record what you’re saying unless you use its wake word, which in this case is “Ok, Google”. So while it may be listening, it’s not saving your casual conversations around the house.
When you do say “Ok, Google”, the device will record your phrase and upload it to the cloud. Your speech will then be recognised and the relevant data is sent back down for the Assistant to relay.
These voice clips are stored in the cloud, however. There will be a record there of every question you have ever asked the Google Assistant.
We’re going to show you how to delete these recordings.
How to delete Google Home voice data
- Launch the Google Home app
- Select Settings, then scroll down to Google Assistant Services and choose More settings
- On the Your info tab select Your data in the Assistant
- Scroll down to Google-wide controls and select ‘See and delete activity’ under Voice and audio recordings
- You can delete anything here by tapping three dots next to it and choosing Delete
- To prevent future recordings you can disable these recordings by disabling the toggle in the app
- On a desktop browser you can alternatively visit myactivity.google.com/myactivity
Are you using Alexa instead? Find out how to delete the voice recordings on the Amazon Echo.