All right well it's November and since our last update Google has released quite a few
new features for Google Assistant speakers displays and the Google Assistant on your
phones.
Now before we dive into the new features a word of warning if you live outside the United
States or you live in the US but do not use the US English version of the Google Assistant.
Some of the features demoed in this video may not have rolled out to you just yet.
First up, let's talk about podcasts.
Now podcasts are something that have become increasingly important to a lot of people
out there helping make their routines throughout the day better like cleaning cooking driving
etc And podcasts have also become an increasingly important part of the assistant experience.
Earlier this year
Google relaunched its Google podcast app on both Android and iOS as well as made it the
only podcast app that integrated with the Google Assistant.
If you want to learn more about it, we did a video on it that a link here in the video
and below in the description.
Now Google knows that while Google podcasts is a great service, there are other podcast
services out there that people may want to listen to podcasts from.
Like Stitcher Spotify etc so Google has started to roll out third-party podcast service support
for the Google Assistant starting with Spotify.
To change your default podcast service that you want the Google Assistant to use go into
assistant settings scroll down to the new podcast section and then you can link your
Spotify account and make that the default provider for podcasts.
Next up let's talk about the broadcast feature with Google Assistant devices Google earlier
this year announced the ability to broadcast to a specific Google Assistant device or room
within your home.
That feature has now started to see a wide rollout on a variety of Google Assistant devices
and it works basically like this.
You say the trigger word then you say broadcast and then you say either these specific speaker
you want to broadcast your message to or the room name in your home that you want to broadcast
your message too.
Here's an example broadcast to the living room dinner is ready.
All right broadcasting to living room Next up Google has rolled out a major feature change
for the routines feature of the Google Assistant by giving us two new routines home and away.
Google can use multiple types of devices in your home like your phone nest guard secure
tag thermostats and the Yale lock to determine if your home or away.
They use this presence detection to enable you to do things with these routines like
turn off all the smart lights in your home when no home member is home or to turn off
the indoor security cameras when a home member, Comes in To get this started open up the Google
Home app select routines and then select either the home or away routine at the top.
You'll see in the how to start section the ability to use presence detection.
You'll need to enable location access for your mobile phone tied to your Google account
to get it to work.
You can select what you want to happen to devices in your home once Google detects that
you've left home or just arrived like automatically turning up the thermostat turning on the lights,
etc.
Next up Disney Plus is now available on Google.
Nest displays.
So you can ask the Google.
Dent on your display for example to play the latest episode of The Mandalorian.
To get this to work open the Google Home app Click Settings scroll down to video and then
link your Disney Plus account to the Google Assistant and then you'll be able to watch
DisneyPlus content on your Google Assistant displays.
Now speaking of assistant displays Google has started to roll out a pretty fundamental
change to assistant displays in general.
Their rolling out a brand new user interface for assistant displays a dark theme and then
finally the ability to see calendar events.
For multiple Google accounts such as your home or work Google account The new home screen
is designed to be contextual.
Only showing the most relevant things to you based on a few factors like your habits or
the time of day.
The new UI is now designed around tabs and there are five main ones.
Time of day home control media communications and discover.
The your day tab will change its title depending on the time of day, you're looking at it.
So it'll say you're more name your afternoon, etc.
It'll present various cards that Google thinks might be imported to you which can include.
Cards that you can tap to play the news show the weather control specific smart devices
listen to news reports etc.
The home control tab shows you the different devices in your home that you can control.
It has a very large tile button to turn on and off the lights in the room that that device
is in as well as categories of devices in your home that you can quickly get to in the
UI.
If you're on the photo frame mode and swipe down from the top this is the view you'll
now get in the UI.
The media tab will show you your media plane on different assistance speakers throughout
your home, which is pretty cool.
Making it easy to control Google will also show deep link tabs here too where you'll
be able to jump right into where you left off in a specific show instead of just opening
up a specific service.
The communication tab shows you information like calling household contacts the ability
to broadcast to a different speaker or make a phone or video call using Google Duo.
The discover tab houses all of the different things the Google Assistant display can do
that you can test out but unlike before these recommendations are more tailored to you like
showing you recipes you may want to.
Make Google is also now rolling out a dark bow that will turn on automatically depending
on the time of day or the rooms ambient light dark mode can also be manually selected by
swiping up from the bottom of the display tapping the gear icon and then tap display
and then you'll be able to manually change your display to dark theme.
Also as reported by the verge and other outlets Google has stated that they are bringing the
ability to see information from both your personal and work Google accounts at the same
time on the display.
So far this hasn't rolled out to me just yet, but once it does I'll be sure.
To demo it in an upcoming video Next let's take a look at the Google Assistant on Android
for a second.
Google has just released a pretty major feature called Shortcuts for the Google Assistant
on Android Shortcuts, allow the assistant to do things within apps installed on your
Android phone.
Like composed a tweet create a new Instagram post.
Share your location on Google Maps, etc.
To get to the new shortcut settings page open up the Google Assistant settings on an Android
device.
Then scroll down and select shortcuts.
You'll first see the Four tab which will recommend shortcuts you can add to your assistant from
the apps you have downloaded on your Android phone.
Once you add a shortcut you do have the ability to edit the phrase you need to say in order
for that shortcut to run.
Here are a few examples of the new shortcuts feature in action.
Send an email.
Tweet.
YouTube subscriptions.
Pretty cool All right next up is a really neat trick with the Google Assistant where
the Google Assistant can try to identify that song you've got stuck in your head.
So you can try humming the song whistle try to make pretty much any noise to replicate
the song.
You've got stuck in your head and see if Google can identify it for you.
Now the way this works is you ask the Google Assistant what song is this and then proceed
to hum that tune and then Google will identify it.
Now, if you're really brave you can even try singing the song to see if Google can identify
the song you're trying to sing.
Here's an example.
Hmm.
Sounds like it might be one of these.
The My heart is fallen through I'm in love with your body.
I hope you don't mind that.
I put down in words how wonderful life.
Well I certainly won't be putting my day job Now do note I've only gotten this to work
on my Android device by using the phrase what's this song?
On iOS if you open the Google app and tap the Assistant button, there's a button that
showed up for me to search a song.
Next up let's talk about how the Google Assistant can help you work from home, especially during
times like these when there's a pandemic going on.
Google has made it easier to break up your workday when you work from home by introducing
a new Google Assistant routine called Workday.
To get To it open up the assistant settings scroll down to routines and then select the
new workday routine.
This pre-made routine which you have the ability to modify can do things like tell you about
the time today's calendar events in the morning as well as your reminders.
Then throughout the day, you can have the assistant proactively remind you to tell you
the time and that it's time to stand up and stretch or time to get up and make lunch or
maybe even go take a break and have a walk.
By default, it'll even give you a warning around 4:45 PM in your local time to start
wrapping.
Up your workday All right last update and it's a quick one Google a month or two back
added a new on/off status for lights in your home in the Google Home app to make it easy
to visually discern if they're on or off and then be able to quickly turn them on or off
from within the app.
Alright, well that's it for the updates for this month.
I hope you found this video helpful and informative and if you like this video, make sure to hit
that thumbs up button below and subscribe to the channel to see more Google videos and
Google Assistant video updates like this one.
For 6 Months Later,
I'm Josh Teder, thanks for watching.