What's happening YouTube, Josh Teder here for 6 Months Later and today
we're going to be going over some new features for google home devices. Now a
few months back in May at Google's annual I/O Developers Conference, they
announced a ton of major features for the Google Assistant which means we've
got a ton to talk about today, so let's get started. This is 6 Months Later.
A few months after Google's i/o event we finally started to see some of the
Google Assistant features they announced rollout. First let's start by talking
about continued conversations, a brand new feature that fundamentally changes
the way you interact with a Google Home device and here's how, and just so you
know we'll be cutting out the trigger word so we don't accidentally trigger
your Google Home while you're watching this. Me: "Hey Google, what's the weather today?"
Google Home: "The forecast in Raleigh tonight is 84 and partly cloudy. Right now it's 85 and
partly cloudy." Me: "What's the humidity?" Google Home: "The humidity in
Raleigh right now is 69%" Me: "Thanks Google." Google: "I'm happy to help." You'll now notice that
you don't have to say the trigger word for every query making the conversation
you can have with your Google Assistant through your Google Home devices much
more natural and it's also way easier to say thank you to your Google Assistant
as well, which as someone who lives in the south, I certainly appreciate.
Note that this feature is only enabled for the US English Google Assistant on the
Google Home, Google Home Mini or Google Home Max. To enable this feature, simply
go into your Google Home app, click the menu button, click more settings,
preferences, continued conversation. When you turn on continued conversation, the
settings will show you all of the speakers that this feature will be
enabled on. I'd recommend rebooting all of your Google Home speakers after
enabling continued conversation if you don't see the new features show up right
away on your devices. Now if you're a little uneasy about enabling this
feature because you're worried about the Google Assistant recording your voice
and listening to you even more than it already does, do note that it only
listens after it's answer for up to eight seconds. After that, it will stop
listening and recording the environment to try to hear it's trigger word and
you'll know that it's listening to you because the little LED lights on your
Google Home device will be lit but lit dimly instead of lit fully when you
first trigger the device. Now unfortunately this feature has not been
working very consistently for me since I enabled it. Sometimes it'll work as
advertised and then other times I'll ask a very similar query and I will not get
the continued conversation from the Google Assistant, so hopefully Google
will be able to improve the reliability and consistency of this feature over
time. Next up, multiple actions. Google now allows the Google Assistant to
understand more complex queries. So take the example I just did for the continued
conversation feature instead of asking Google about the weather and humidity
with separate queries, we can just combine them. Me: "Hey Google, what's the current
weather and humidity in Raleigh?" Google Home: "Tomorrow it'll be sunny with a high of 95 and a
low of 72. The current humidity in Raleigh is 69%." Speaking of weather, I've
noticed recently that the Google Assistant will tell you when it is
supposed to rain or snow or any type of precipitation event which is something
that it never did for me before and has been a welcome improvement. Google: "It will rain
in Raleigh Wednesday from 2 to 5 p.m." Me: "Thanks Google." Google: "I'm happy to help."
We've had functionality similar to multiple actions before but multiple
since promises to be an expansion for example Google recently started allowing
the assistant to understand up to three actions in a single query. Now another
announcement that came out of I/O was an expansion of different voices you can
use for the Google Assistant. There are now quite a variety you can select from
to be your assistants voice. Google: "help you throughout your day and now you can
choose for more voices for me for me to speak with hi I'm your Google assistant
here to ever to help you throughout your day and now you can choose from more
voices for me to speak with." And there are more on the way. Later this year
you'll be able to have John Legend to be the voice of your assistant and I mean
who wouldn't want that? Next up: custom and scheduled routines.
Now a few months ago, Google rolled out this new feature called routines which
allows you to say a trigger phrase and then the Google Assistant will perform a
list of potential actions for you based off that phrase and ever since Google
rolled out that feature, the number one ask Google Assistant users seem to have
requested is the ability to customize these routines. Well, Google has heard all
of our feedback and you can now do just that create a custom routine. To create a
custom routine open your Google home app, click the menu button, more settings,
scroll down and then select routines. If you've ever created a shortcut for the
Google Assistant, these are now shown in the routines page. The ready-made
routines that you may be familiar with are also in this screen. To create a new
routine click on the blue plus bubble. Routines are comprised of three
different parts a command, an action, and media. A command is what you tell the
Google Assistant when you want it to complete a routine. Let's do an example.
Okay, so I'm going to have sexytime be the trigger phrase for my routine.
Next I'll create some actions. I want it to say something silly like, 'okay turning
around and plugging my ears' and next I'll want it to turn the lights to hot pink
and dim the lights to 50% brightness. Next I want the Google Home to play
'Oh Yeah' on my bedroom speakers. Lastly, you have the ability for the Google Home to
also play media but if you have a more specific action in mind like playing a
specific song on a specific speaker group like I do in this example, I'd
recommend doing that in actions and not in the media area. After you've got your
custom routine the way you like it, click save and try it out. Me: "OK Google, sexytime." Google Home: "Okay
turning around and plugging my ears." This feature works pretty well so far out of
the box though I have run into some odd quirks. All of the Google homes will
repeat all of the actions the Google assistant is taking not just the Google
Home I first talked to when I wanted to trigger the routine, which is kind of
annoying. As with the continued conversation feature, hopefully Google
will be able to fix this one too. Alright that about wraps it up for the stuff out
of I/O but I've still got two more quick updates for you and the first one is
with Phillips Hue lights. If you have a bunch of Philips Hue lights in your
residence and you've already connected them to your Google Assistant, you'll
know that previously you were not able to turn on a scene with the Google
Assistant. Well now you can. You can now link your Philips Hue light
scenes to your Google Assistant. All you need to do is resync your Philips Hue
account with your Google Assistant and then your Philips Hue scenes should pop
up in your Google Assistant settings. To view them, go to the Google Home app, menu,
home control, and then scroll down until you see the Philips Hue lights and scenes.
To ask the Google assistant to turn on a specific scene, simply say the trigger
word and then say turn on your scene, and then what room if you only want to
turn the scene on in a specific room.
Okay, last update. Now I know a lot of you viewers out there have been asking for
more languages to be supported on the Google Assistant. Well, Google has heard
this feedback and will now be supporting over 30 languages by the end of this
year. These include Danish, Dutch, Hindi,
Indonesian, Norwegian, Swedish, and Thai. Also sometime later this year, Google
will automatically enable a feature that detects the language you're speaking to
a Google home device or the Google Assistant on your mobile device and then
the Google Assistant will automatically switch to that language. Now if you're
curious, the currently supported languages for the Google Assistant on
Google Home devices are French, English, German, Italian, Japanese, [Portuguese], and Spanish.
Well, that about wraps it up for our Google Home features update video. Thank you so
much for watching. If you enjoyed this video, please feel free to give us a
thumbs up and subscribe to the channel if you never want to miss out on another
Google Home features update video like this one. Well, until next time, thanks so
much for watching. I'm Josh Teder for 6 Months Later.