You can now talk to Google Home without saying 'Hey, Google' every time

Google Home with blue lighting behind it
Google Home with blue lighting behind it (Image credit: Harish Jonnalagadda/Android Central)

Google announced a lot of new features for the Assistant during I/O this past May, and today one of the most exciting — Continued Conversations — is widely rolling out to all users.

As it currently stands, you need to say "Ok, Google" or "Hey, Google" each and every time you ask your Google Home a question or issue a command to it. With Continued Conversations, your Google Home will continue listening for a short period (around 8 seconds) after you first begin talking to it.

For example, if you say "Hey, Google, what's the weather" and then realize you need to get a new umbrella for an impending storm, you can just say "add an umbrella to my shopping list" and your Google Home will be able to pick up on the command. Once you're done talking to your Google Home, you can say "thank you" or "stop" to manually stop it from listening.

Continued Conversations is turned off by default, but you can easily enable it from the Google Assistant settings on your phone by going to Settings -> Preferences -> Continued Conversations.

This feature is initially rolling out in English for users in the United States and is available starting today on the Google Home, Home Mini, and Home Max.

Google Home Mini review, 6 months later: The smart speaker that should be in everybody's home

Joe Maring

Joe Maring was a Senior Editor for Android Central between 2017 and 2021. You can reach him on Twitter at @JoeMaring1.