All right well it's April and we've got some new Google assistant features to talk about
as well as we're gonna do a couple of deep dives on some features that have now finally rolled
out including the automated news option new clock faces and we'll take you through the newest Google
Assistant display, the Nest Hub second generation and how you can use it for sleep tracking and
other new features. Before we dive into those features and products two things first any
feature you see demoed here on this video is using the US English version of the Google Assistant.
If you live outside of the United States or you live in the US but you do not use the US
English version of the Google Assistant some of the features you may see in this video they
might not have rolled out to you just yet. Second, special thanks to this video's sponsor PDFelement
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All right first up, let's talk about some big new features for Google Assistant devices and
these of course come with the new Nest Hub second generation which just hit
store shelves here in the US this week. With the new Nest Hub, Google added in a piece of
hardware we've seen before on the Pixel 4 XL and the Pixel 4: the soli radar chip.
Soli allows you to do a few new things on the second generation nest hub
it allows you to play/pause by tapping the air in front of the display so you don't want to have
to worry about touching the display. The Soli radar allows the Nest Hub second generation to
do sleep tracking which is kind of insane when you think about it because the predominant way
most of us around the globe have been doing sleep tracking with consumer devices is by using one of
these a wearable on our wrist and there are some inherent downsides to tracking your sleep with a
wearable one you always got to make sure that this thing is charged and the predominant way,
most of us still charge things is overnight so when you're trying to track your sleep,
you can't actually charge this device so you have to charge it like when you're in the shower in
the morning or at some other time. And then that will often lead to either you completely forget
to charge it entirely or the batteries running low and it runs out on you while it's tracking
your sleep, so you get an incomplete picture at how you may have slept on a certain night.
The Nest Hub is always plugged in and uses the soli radar to analyze how the person closest
to the display is sleeping based on their breathing and movements,
all without a camera or wearable. Sleep sense, which is the new name for this feature can also
detect some sleep disturbances like coughing and snoring or light and temperature changes
in the room with the nest hubs mics and ambient light color temperature sensors.
It uses all of this data to help you understand what's impacting your sleep
and overall how well you're sleeping and all of this data also of course is implications for
the Google Assistant. You can ask it things like how did I
sleep? Google Assistant "It looks like you slept a good amount and it was fairly restful.
You woke up a little early but slept for seven hours and 43 minutes."
Did I cough last night? Google Assistant "It looks like you didn't cough at all."
What about snoring? Google Assistant: "It looks like you snored for a total of 21
minutes." With the data from the sleep centers the assistant will also provide
you with suggestions on how you can sleep better and create tailored bedtime schedules.
There's also a new wellness setting that you can find in your assistant
settings on a mobile device by opening the Google Assistant on your phone tapping the
icon at the top right and then scrolling down until you find wellness. The wellness setting
is in connection with the new sleep features and likely down the road the new wearables.
Google will launch now that it has completed the Fitbit Acquisition. If you'd like to track your
sleep on your phone you can do this by downloading the Google Fit app as well. The wellness settings
allows you to opt into your assistant proactively showing your information on your displays
and devices that include things like exercise, nutrition, sleep, and overall wellness data.
Even if you don't enable the sleep sense on the new nest hub Google has made some
additional changes to the display so it'll dim at night to make your bedroom more sleep friendly
and the your evening page helps wind you down at night with relaxing sounds.
When it's time to wake up the nest hub sunrise alarm will gradually brighten the display and
increase the alarm volume. If you want to sleep a bit more you can even use motion sense
to waive your hand and snooze the alarm. Now we'll have much more on the Nest Hub second
generation here on the channel as well as we'll do a dedicated video to reviewing its sleep tracking
functionality, so make sure you're subscribed to the channel if you want to see that video.
Now another feature I want to talk about with Google Assistant displays
are some new clock faces that recently rolled out. Timeless is an analog clock
with circular indicators at 12 3 6 and 9. It also comes in a dark variant as well.
There's also now a weather clock face which will look familiar to Lenovo alarm clock owners.
This clock face shows the time in front and it'll display the current weather condition
in a visual form in the background. So when it's raining, you'll see rain
when it's clear at night, you'll see stars etc. To change your ambient mode display options
swipe up from the bottom of the Google Assistant display.
Select photo frame and then select full screen clock for the new clock faces.
You can also just ask Google to set the photo frame as well. Alright the last feature I want
to dive into a bit more is the automated news feature. Now when the Google Assistant first
came out you could play news on it but it was a news summary and these were little
many news snippets from different outlets that you could choose and then reorder in a playlist.
But a few months back the company rolled out an additional option and to see it,
lets go into news settings by opening up the Google Assistant on either an iPhone or Android
device. Once you add the assistant open click on your profile at the top right hand corner then
scroll down until you see news tap that and scroll down to the bottom of the page that appears.
Tap the blue button that says change news playlists format. Then select
the your news update. The your news update allows Google to automatically curate your
news playlists every day based on the sources and topics Google knows you're interested in
from searches as well as what you read on Google News if you use that service.
What the assistant is doing here is two things. Some of the news clips are short-form podcasts
released by the sources themselves while other news that Google plays like from the verge or
nine to five Google in my case are actually news articles that the Google Assistant is reading
out loud, which is technology that Google released earlier last year where you can
take pretty much any article on an Android device and ask the assistant to read this.
One of the major benefits I found with using the Your News Update is Discovery.
When I switched over to this automated news playlist summary, I noticed immediately that
it started pulling in local news stories from local outlets here in the Raleigh area. Now
it didn't pull in stories from all of the outlets but a majority of them and I was actually quite
surprised at quite thrilled that it did that because I considered this to be a big win.
Here in the US a lot of the times our news is just so national it's either
about like national stories or national politics and I don't know about you
but local news and local issues can have a big if not a bigger impact on your day-to-day life. So
I didn't even realize a lot of these outlets made content for
smart speakers or that you could play in a podcast form on your smartphone but
I'm really glad that Google picks up on it and it puts these stories into the your news update.
Now this feature doesn't work perfectly and I think Google did something
recently that broke the news briefing feature and because when you click,
Shows in the news settings, it doesn't show you any news sources like from NPR or the BBC
which are new sources you can play from when asking the assistant directly and previously,
sources I could add into my own news summary. So, I'm not sure what's going on there.
All right, one last quick assistant feature to mention is that Paramount+ launched about a
month ago or so and you can link your Paramount+ account to the Google Assistant. You can do this
by going to the videos and photos sections in your assistant settings, and then ask the assistant
on an assistant display to play a Paramount+ show like the card or SpongeBob for the kids and boom.
It just works. If you have a Chromecast you can also ask Google to play SpongeBob on the TV
and it will start playing it on your TV. All right well that's it for the assistant updates
this month. I hope you found this video helpful and informative and if you did and liked it,
make sure you hit that thumbs up button below and we're anticipating more news and more features
being announced by Google as we go into May when they typically do their Google I/O event.
So, make sure you subscribe to the channel to stay up-to-date on all of the latest news for
Google Assistant devices and all of the feature updates for them as well. Well,
that's gonna do it for me. For 6 Months Later, I'm Josh Tedder. Thanks for watching.