How to delete Google Home voice recordings
Privacy is a hot button issue in 2019, especially with recent revelations that personal data has been recorded and stored by companies and voice assistants without our knowledge.
Thankfully, as far as Google goes, despite the company recording your voice data whenever you wake the device up, you do have considerable control over what is stored.
And, in this guide, we’ll be detailing how to view, listen and remove Google Assistant recordings.
Naturally, there’s some personal information that Google requires to make its line of smart speakers more helpful, but below, we’ll provide a step-by-step guide to understanding exactly what you can and can’t control.
View & Delete Google Assistant Recordings
Google makes it quite straightforward to access Google Home interactions, but how much you delete is up to you.
Google now lets you remove individual recordings, delete between specific dates or set your account up to automatically delete after a certain amount of time.
Delete Recordings Individually
1. Go to the Google Home app.
2. Tap the Account tab in the bottom-right corner and then My Activity.
3. Scroll through the list to find a recording you want to delete.
4. Tap the three dots to the right of the recording and tap the Delete tab.
In this list, Google shows a transcript of the command and its response. It also allows you to play back audio recordings, though you’ll likely find that some will be lost in your account and simply show up as Unknown Voice Command.
Delete Recordings Between Specific Dates
1. Go to the Google Home app.
2. Tap the Account tab in the bottom-right corner and then My Activity.
3. In the search box at the top, tap the three dots on the right-hand side.
4. In the dropdown box, tap Delete Activity By.
5. This will take you to a new screen, where you can delete everything from that day, yesterday, the last week, last month or all the time. You can also manually input dates you want to delete between.
Delete Recordings Automatically
If you don’t want to keep manually deleting recordings picked up by the Assistant, you can also choose to have your activity removed automatically.
1. Go to the Google Home app.
2. Tap the Account tab in the bottom-right corner and then My Activity.
3. Before your stream of recordings, tap the tap that says, ”Your activity is being kept until you delete it manually”. Tap the tab that says, “Choose to delete automatically”.
4. Keeping data until you delete it is the default setting, but you can choose to keep either for 18 months or three months before it disappears automatically.
Delete Recordings Using Your Voice
Using the Google Home app is one way to delete your recordings manually, but you can now also zap recordings by just talking to your device.
Following an automatic update (which is now available in English, heading to other languages this November), users are able to ask the Assistant to delete history with commands like, “Hey Google, delete the last thing I just said to you”, or, “Hey Google, delete everything I said to you last week”.
Does Google Keep A Copy Of Deleted Recordings?
When you delete items from My Activity, as we instructed above, Google says they are permanently deleted from your Google Account.
However, Google also indicates that it may keep servicerelated information about your account, like which Google products you used and when, to prevent spam and abuse and to improve its services.
What Happens To Data If You Uninstall Google Home App?
Since all your recordings are linked to your Google account, it doesn’t make a difference if you uninstall the Google Home app, stop using your device, or, as Google itself describes, delete your account.
Whatever is in your My Activity section will live there until you’ve deleted it – or not.
Using the Google Home app is one way to delete your recordings manually, but you can now also zap recordings by just talking to your device.