googleassistant

No more Google Assistant on Fitbit Versa 3

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A screenshot of an email from Google Fitbit. It says: You are receiving this email to let you know about an upcoming change to your Fitbit Sense and/or Versa 3. Over the next few weeks we will be progressively phasing out Google Assistant on your Fitbit device. You can learn more about this process here. This change means that Google Assistant voice control for activities will no longer be available on your Fitbit device.

In a few weeks time, Google is removing support for Google Assistant on its Fitbit Versa 3 and Sense devices. I have a Fitbit Versa 3, and so last week I received an email (screenshotted above) notifying me. Going forward, if you have a Fitbit Versa 3 or Fitbit Sense, you’ll only be able to use Amazon Alexa and not Google Assistant.

When I first heard about this, I was a little confused. After all, with Google now owning Fitbit, you would expect them to phase out support for Alexa to keep you in Google’s ecosystem. So, I did a bit of digging.

Alexa on Fitbit has always supported more features

Firstly, Google Assistant has been a poor relation of Alexa on Fitbit devices. On a Fitbit, Alexa can do most things that an Amazon Echo device can do, including controlling smart home devices. Google Assistant was more limited, to things like web searches, or launching apps on the Fitbit device to set timers or start exercises.

I’ve had my Fitbit Versa 3 for nearly three years – it was a 38th birthday present from Christine – and in that time I’ve only ever used Google Assistant. Following this announcement, I switched to Alexa, and have so far found it more capable. We don’t use any other Alexa devices at home, and so I’ve had to link up our various smart home devices to Alexa son that I can interact with them. For the most part, I’ve used Home Assistant and Homeway to achieve this.

Google is ‘upgrading’ Assistant to Gemini

You’re probably aware of Google Gemini, which is Google’s AI chat bot. Later this year, Gemini will replace the Google Assistant mobile app, as Google wants to foist its AI tools on its existing Google Assistant users. I’m not extremely comfortable with this, as I believe that current AI models are flawed and inefficient. For example, last year Gemini told people to eat one rock per day, and I’m concerned with the amount of computing power these AI models need compared to more basic natural language parsing. But I guess I don’t have a choice unless I stop using Google Assistant altogether.

Anyway, it seems that Google has decided that its older devices won’t be getting the Gemini upgrade. When you use Google Assistant on a Fitbit Versa 3, it communicates with the Google Assistant on your paired phone by Bluetooth. Presumably then, once the Google Assistant app has disappeared from app stores, it won’t be able to work. Google no longer sells the Versa 3 and Sense, and so I’m guessing they’ve made a business decision not to support the Gemini upgrade. After all, unless you’re a Fitbit Premium or Google One subscriber, you’re not making any more money for Google after having bought the device.

For now, the newer Fitbit Versa 4 and Sense 2 should still work with Google Assistant – these models are still on sale at the time of writing. However, they’re being phased out – in future, Google will only sell the Inspire and Charge Fitbit ranges. If you want a smart watch, you’ll be steered towards Google’s Pixel Watch range – but bear in mind that they’re Android-only.

As for my Fitbit Versa 3? Hopefully it’ll keep going for at least a couple more years, and I’m happy with using Alexa instead of Google Assistant for now. When it comes to replacing it, however, I’ll need to think hard about my choices. Whilst Fitbit’s smart watch range is less capable than, say, an Apple Watch, they offer much better battery life. An Apple Watch Ultra typically lasts only 36 hours, whereas the Versa 3 would do five days on a full charge when I bought it. Even now, it still manages 3-4 days, depending on use.

Home Assistant and Google Home broadcasts

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Screenshot of Home Assistant showing a script to broadcast a message via Google Home when my washing machine finishes

We have six Google Home Mini devices around our home, and now I can get Home Assistant to automatically deliver broadcast messages. Here’s how I did it.

Broadcast messages

When you have more than one Google Home device, you can say ‘Okay Google, broadcast [message]’, and it will relay that message to all of the other Google Home devices in your home. It’s useful for announcing that dinner’s ready, for example. Our house is long, rather than square, and I’m hard of hearing, so we use this quite a lot.

What I wanted to achieve was automation of these broadcasts, so that a broadcast was triggered by an event. This is possible thanks to the Google Assistant SDK integration. It’s a bit of a faff to set up – I recommend following this guide or watching the video embedded below:

Call the service

Once it’s set up, you can test it by opening Home Assistant’s Developer Tools. Click the ‘Service’ tab, and choose the ‘Google Assistant SDK: Send text command’ service. In the command, type something like ‘broadcast "This is a test"‘ and click ‘Call Service’. If you’ve set everything up correctly, your Google Home devices should all say something like “Incoming broadcast; it says: This is a test”.

Create a script

As I write this, the latest version of Home Assistant (2024.4.x) doesn’t allow automations to call services directly. So, to be able to trigger the broadcast, we’ll first need to create a Script in Home Assistant. In my example, I have a script called ‘Washing machine finished broadcast’. The ‘mode’ is left at the default setting of ‘Single’, and then I’ve created an Action which is to Call a Service. As above, I have selected ‘Google Assistant SDK: Send text command’ as the service to call, and then entered ‘broadcast "The washing machine has finished"‘ as the command, which I have ticked. I’ve left the rest blank.

Whilst here, I’ve also added a time condition. As this will be triggered when the washing machine finishes, I don’t want it to run when we might be asleep. We have Google Home devices in each of the bedrooms, and we sometimes run the washing machine overnight.

Home Assistant runs script actions in order. So, if you also want to add a time condition, you’ll need to add this before the Google Assistant SDK service call, or re-order the actions. In this example, I have created a Test action, where the current time is between 8am and 8pm. Outside of those times, the script will fail and not process the next command, so the broadcast action won’t be executed.

Link it to an automation

Now that we have a script, we can integrate this with an automation. I’m using my existing automation that sends a phone notification when my washing machine finishes. In my case, this is triggered using Meross energy monitoring smart plugs (sponsored link).

So now, as well as sending a notification, it also triggers a broadcast (within the time constraints).

Other things you can do with Google Home

Once you have the Google Asssistant SDK integration installed in Home Assistant, you can use scripts to run any other command that you would say to Google Home. You could, for example, create a button on your Home Assistant dashboard, which triggers the text command ‘play Never Going To Give You Up by Rick Astley on Spotify‘ if you want to automatically rickroll the other occupants of your house. It can also control smart home devices which work with Google Assistant, but do not yet have a Home Assistant integration.