Google wants to shove AI down our throats whether you like it or not. There’s already enough AI in our phones and everywhere on the internet, but apparently, that’s not enough for the search giant. Google has been pushing to bring Gemini into the living room. It was supposed to make TVs smarter, but instead, for a growing number of people, it made them unusable.
Over the past few months, people across regions have reported a consistent problem – search on Google TV simply stops working. You press the mic button, say what you want, and the interface loops back to the same Gemini setup screen without any results. Until Google fixes it properly, the only reliable solution has been to go into settings and start turning things off.
Gemini made Google TV worse
We're better off without it
Google plans to add Gemini to Google TV in the US. The company claims it will make Google TV-powered televisions easier to use. The Gemini integration will let you do more than you can with Google Assistant right now. It will let you ask for movies in plain language, get recommendations based on your tastes, and even ask general questions.
The AI will help you ask more detailed queries, rather than the basic questions you can ask Google Assistant right now. For example, you can ask for a lighter version of an action movie, or you can ask it to explain a topic to a child. Google says you can also use it to control smart home devices and do things like pull up a camera feed. Overall, this doesn't sound too bad. It could actually help get better recommendations, but the current implementation has done more harm than good.
It's been about five months since Google started replacing Assistant with Gemini on Google TV, but the transition hasn't been painless. Users across devices have reported that triggering voice search opens the Gemini setup flow instead of returning results. You go through onboarding, grant permissions, pick a voice, and try again, only to land on the same screen. The process repeats without ever completing a search. I've experienced this myself multiple times.
The likely cause is the way Gemini has been integrated into the system. There seems to be a mismatch between Gemini’s cloud-based model and Google TV’s local content discovery system. When the onboarding state fails to complete or sync correctly, the system resets the process every time you try to search.
There are also signs that this is part of a broader transition problem. Google has been removing the option to fall back to the older Assistant, leaving no reliable backup when Gemini fails.
These are the settings I changed to make my TV usable again
The problem is easily fixable at the moment
Until Google rolls out a proper fix, the only way to deal with the broken Gemini integration on Google TV is to go into settings and manually undo parts of it. The first thing that worked almost instantly was rolling back the Google TV app update. You can do this by heading into Settings > Apps > See All Apps > Google TV> Uninstall Updates.
This reverts the app to the version that shipped with your device, before Gemini was baked in. In most cases, search starts working again right away. The problem is that Google will quietly reinstall the update in the background, so it's important to also disable auto-updates for that app. You can find this in the same app settings menu under the three-dot menu. It won't stop updates forever, but it does prevent the issue from coming back within a few hours.
If the loop still persists or returns later, clearing the app’s cache and data is the next step. Go back into the Google TV app settings and tap Clear Cache followed by Clear Data. Cache clearing removes temporary files, while clearing data resets the app entirely. That means you might have to sign back in, but it also wipes any broken setup state. The issue often stems from Gemini getting stuck midway through its onboarding, so resetting that state gives it a chance to complete properly rather than loop.
The last set of changes is in the Privacy settings, where you can limit how aggressively Gemini takes over voice input. Under Settings > Privacy > Voice Assistant > Gemini for TV, and turn it Off. On some devices, this disables voice control completely, but it also stops the assistant from hijacking every microphone press. You can also go into your account settings and turn off personal results and hands-free microphone access. This reduces the amount of data Gemini tries to pull in and avoids the part of the setup process that most often causes the loop.
