What you need to know
- Google is bringing more Assistant features to smart home devices this week.
- It's adding support for hotword sensitivity and an improved Voice Match.
- Users should also be on the lookout for a new preferred speaker setting in the Google Home app.
Google is expanding the availability of some of Assistant's more recent features to a broader range of devices from today. Assistant is a selling point of devices like the Google Home and other adjacent smart speakers, feature fragmentation could lead to customer confusion where a user tries a command that works just fine on Google's first-party Home and Nest speakers, only to fail with their other smart speaker or display. Google is attempting to mitigate that feature-gap with some updates this week.
First of all, Google is bringing Voice Match to more smart speakers. With this update, you'll also be able to use Voice Match with up to six people. This is aimed at Google smart speakers or displays serving entire families.
Google Is also bringing the hotword sensitivity feature that was spotted a few weeks ago to more devices. Google says it should roll out in the coming weeks.
Finally, Google is enabling a preferred speaker option, so when you say "OK Google, play some music" it'll automatically start playing on that speaker without you needing to change it. You will be able to designate any device as the "default music speaker" through the Google Home settings page of your preferred device.
All these features should start rolling out widely from this week on, though some may have seen them available already.
Do you use a Google Assistant-enabled smart speaker? Let us know in the comments below.
