Nest WiFi can now prioritize your bandwidth for gaming and video conferencing

Last year, we saw that a ‘gaming preferred’ setting was coming to the Nest Wifi via the Google Home app. Gaming preferred would allow you to prioritize devices in the home for more bandwidth usage while playing on Stadia, a game console, or a computer. There was even a support page placed up to detail how it would work. Now, it looks as though the feature is officially rolling out with version 2.31 of the Home app as the newly named ‘preferred activities’.

The reason it’s called ‘preferred activities’ instead of just ‘gaming preferred’ is because it can also specifically provide improved Wi-Fi performance to devices that are being actively used for video conferencing via Google Meet and Zoom. Once you toggle them on in the Home app settings, Google will automatically handle decisions regarding bandwidth for you if it senses that a video call is taking place or if a gaming service is launched. It’s unknown at this time whether other services will work with preferred activities in the near future, but I imagine they will.

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This update comes as a part of the 20Q4 firmware release 13099.118.19 of Nest Wi-Fi (and Google Wi-Fi) and also includes improved visibility into Wi-Fi events in the Home app feed for device connection failures and issues due to password problems and poor coverage, and mesh connection issues due to poor placement and underperforming WAN ethernet links. Additionally, the firmware update improves client connectivity and roaming, gives better reliability for high rate data frames, IPTV IGMP robustness, and implements better general security, stability, and performance overall.