Google is ending April with a rather sizable Home app and Gemini for Home voice assistant updates.
Google Home app
Starting with the Google Home app, an “Updated Camera Experience” is beginning to roll out. This modernization adds dynamic theming, while “key features [are] more easily accessible and discoverable,” especially at the bottom of the screen.
Old vs. new
For Advanced plan subscribers of Google Home Premium, your timeline now includes AI descriptions, making it easier and more enjoyable to scroll through your history and identify interesting moments.
On that AI front:
- Clearer Event Descriptions: We’ve refined our camera AI descriptions to remove unnecessary clutter, making them more accurate and easier to read at a glance.
- Faster Search: Finding what you’re looking for is now quicker, with camera search results loading noticeably faster in Ask Home.
- Simplified Camera Settings: Now your camera settings are much easier to find. We’ve elevated useful features such as Gemini for Home, familiar face detection and Activity Zones. Activity Zones are now much faster to configure and update. Seen and heard events are now combined into a single page, streamlining event recording and notification configuration.
Similarly, the “new media control experience when using Google Home App to cast music and videos to your Google smart speakers, smart displays, Google TV Streamer and other Cast devices is now available to all users” (emphasis ours). Google might be referring to last year’s Material 3 redesign when you open a media device’s controls page.
Putting your favourite artists’ beautiful album artwork front and center and giving you better access to playback controls and device management.
Controller pages will now show “instant account-relinking prompts” when an expired partner link is behind offline devices. Finally, feedback reports now include more detailed diagnostic information to help Google “fix issues faster.”
Google Home Premium users will now benefit from account holds wherein subscriptions “will be temporarily paused rather than ending if there are payment issues, helping ensure you don’t lose your video history, familiar faces, or AI event descriptions.”
Gemini for Home voice assistant
Today’s Gemini for Home voice assistant updates offer “Faster Smart Home Control.” Controlling lights and plugs could be up to 1.5 seconds faster. Google credits “optimizing how [it processes] device commands and home layouts” for this “significant speed boost.”
Then there’s “more efficient processing for near-instant execution” of alarm, timer, and reminder commands, “even when you include specific times or names.” Google says to try:
- “Turn on the kitchen lights.”
- “Set a timer for 10 minutes.”
- “Cancel my pizza timer.”
These speed improvements are live for English, French, and Spanish users in supported countries. Support for more languages is “coming soon.”
The Gemini for Home assistant is now better at “identifying when a request is a standalone command versus a follow-up.”
Based on context, Gemini can determine when to ignore irrelevant speech, which is also helpful for users who activate Continued Conversation.
Custom Routines are now better at running “without interference from other smart home commands.”
- “Hey Google, I’m home.” (triggers your “I’m home” routine)
- “Hey Google, set a timer for 10 minutes… and turn off the fan.”
- “Hey Google, what’s the weather?” → “How about in Seattle?”
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