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Can I pair a Google Home Mini with an Amazon Echo?

Pair a Google Home Mini with Amazon Echo
The perfect pair: you can play music from your Google Home Mini through an Echo speaker

Yes, somewhat surprisingly, you can. Here at BTQ Towers, I have both a Google Home Mini and an Amazon Echo speaker. The Home Mini is great for making phone calls and answering random queries, the Amazon Echo offers far superior sound quality. And, as I’ve just discovered, you can pair a Google Home Mini with an Amazon Echo to get the best sound quality from both assistants. Here’s how.

Pair a Google Home Mini with an Amazon Echo

First, let’s deal with the caveat. The Amazon Echo will only be used as the Google Home Mini’s speaker when it’s playing music, podcasts or audiobooks. General queries will still be answered through the Google Home Mini’s speaker. That’s not a massive problem, as you don’t really care about the sound quality when you’re trying to find out when your local Tesco supermarket shuts or how to spell ‘condescending’.

So, how to pair the devices? First, go into your Alexa app, select Alexa Devices from the menu, choose the speaker you wish to use with the Google Home Mini and click on Bluetooth Devices.

In the menu that appears, click the Pair A New Device button, as shown:

Amazon Alexa app

 

Now open the Google Home app. Click the menu button in the top-left corner and select Devices. Your Google Home Mini should be listed on this screen. Click the three little dots next to its listing and select Settings.

Scroll down until you see Default Music Speaker and click that. Now click Pair Bluetooth speaker and you should hopefully see your Echo there waiting to be selected. Job done.

Google Home app

Now, whenever you ask the Google Home Mini to play Kajagoogoo’s Greatest Hits, the music should come out of your Alexa speaker. You can still ask Alexa whatever you like while she’s playing the Google Home Mini’s music.

Now click here: what are the funniest things to say to Alexa?

About the author

Barry Collins

Barry has scribbled about tech for almost 20 years for The Sunday Times, PC Pro, WebUser, Which? and many others. He was once Deputy Editor of Mail Online and remains in therapy to this day. Email Barry at barry@bigtechquestion.com.

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    • It works. But like all things Google, things are not always straightforward. There are 2 options for bluetooth in the Home Settings, which can confuse people. The top level menu option is ‘Paired bluetooth devices’. Then there is the ‘Pair bluetooth speaker’ inside ‘Default Music Speaker’. If you are already paired with Echo, it will be one of the available speakers inside ‘Default music speaker’. If you choose Echo from that list, it’ll give you an error message, for some strange reason. You got to click the ”Pair bluetooth speaker’ and choose your Echo device again for it to be chosen as the default speaker. Like I said, there is always some redundancy ‘built’ into all Google apps..almost like a feature..lol.

  • This worked great! And yes, it works the reverse. I paired my Google Nest Mini to my Echo Dot and can now ask alexa to play amazon music on my mini.

  • not sure i see the point of this. the alexa speaker pictured has a better sound than the google unit. so why would you want to output to the lesser unit:? I assume if use bluetooth from the alexa speaker that the alexa unit speaker does not work at the same time. Am i missing something?
    If it would work in sync with all other alexa speakers it would be another story..