Google speaker groups just got a major missing feature back

A little more than two years ago, Google found itself in the unfortunate position of having to make one of its signature products worse. 

Faced with an early 2022 U.S. trade commission ruling that found Google in violation of five Sonos patents, the tech giant made the decision to pull a series of smart speaker features, including a key one: the ability to control the volume of speaker groups using a single group volume slider. 

But in the wake of an October 2023 federal court ruling that those Sonos patents were invalid, Google began to roll back those changes, and on Wednesday, it said that smart speaker users–including those with Nest speakers–will finally be able to use group volume sliders again. 

This news story is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best smart speakers.

In a blog post on the Google Nest community site, Google said that users can now control the volume of speaker groups using the Google Home app for Android or via Google Assistant voice commands. 

Just use the slider in the Google Home mini player to control the volume for all the speakers and devices in a selected speaker group. You can also tell Google Assistant to “turn it up” or set a specific volume for a speaker group. 

Meanwhile, the ability to control Google speaker group volume via the lock screen of an Android phone or directly on a Nest smart display is “on the way,” Google added. 

Google had previously rolled back other restrictions on its speaker groups, including a change that blocked certain Nest and Chromecast devices from joining more than one speaker group at once. 

Google didn’t mention its legal spat with Sonos in its Wednesday blog post. But as reenabled other Google speaker group restrictions last fall, the tech giant lashed Sonos for its “years-long, misleading campaign against helpful features in our Google Hom devices on spurious patent grounds.” 

We’ve reached out to Sonos for comment. 

Sonos first sued Google over its patents back in 2020, claiming that Google had ripped off the technology behind its wireless speakers. 

In January 2022, the U.S. International Trade Commission ruled that Google had violated five Sonos patents. Faced with an import ban, Google began pulling speaker group features, including the ability to control the volume of speaker groups using a single group slider. 

But in October 2023, a U.S. federal judge ruled that Sonos’s patents were unenforceable, while also tossing a $32.5 million jury verdict against Google.