Google has removed yet another essential feature from its Hub/Nest device. Previously, if you connected external BT speakers to the Hub, it would play media (music etc.) on the BT speakers, but the Assistant would respond through the built in Hub /speaker. This is reflected in Google's own support documents:
Google Nest Help - Help Center, where it says:
"Note: All media playback will play on the external speaker that’s paired with the Google Nest or Home device. Alarms, timers and Google Assistant's responses will play on your Google Nest or Home device."
This worked well, and in my case it was essential to my audio set up, as I prefer to power off my receiver/amp when not playing music, but the BT stays connected because it is a separately powered external receiver that passes the audio to my stereo and its connected speakers. I also imagine that if you used BT headphones with the Hub you would still want the ability for other users to communicate with the Hub while you were listening to music. This is no longer possible. Both media AND Assistant responses are coming through whichever speaker has been set to default. This means if I turn off my stereo, I no longer hear verbal responses from my Hub.
It is such a shame that Google has cut back the abilities of the Hub instead of expanding them.
A few years back they eliminated the ability to cast music to the hub from an Android phone. There used to be a "Cast my audio" button in Home dor the Hub Display. Now there is just "Cast my screen" which has inferior audio quality.
The motion sensing feature had such potential (it could have expanded to volume control, for example). Very sad!
