Google’s Home Upgrades Go Further Than New Hardware

First and foremost is the new Favorites tab. Devices you mark as your “favorite” are front and center when you open the app. That also includes camera feeds, and you’ll be able to see the live feed immediately without having to tap into a device. Above this section are your Spaces, which are devices broken down into categories, like Lighting, Cameras, and Wi-Fi. You’ll be able to customize these Spaces to create your own categories, like “Pet Devices,” but this customization won’t be available until 2023. At the very bottom of the Home app sits a new media player that shows what’s playing on any of your connected devices, making it easy to quickly hit play/pause or change the volume.

Google says its customers have been asking for a better camera experience, so it has focused on improving the camera feeds in the Home app. Click into a specific camera to watch a sped-up version of everything that happened while you were gone, or dive deeper through events to catch specific moments. 

Home automation gets the center tab in the redesigned app, so it’s easier to see what actions can trigger your devices—like all of your lights turning off when you leave home. Google says it’s expanding support for household routines to include more devices too. Take the Rise and Shine automation, for example. Instead of the lights turning on at 8 am, you can have a Philips Hue Motion Sensor turn on the lights when it detects movement. This can then set off a chain of commands, like playing music and powering on the kettle. If you want even more control, Google says a Script Editor will be available next year. 

The new Google Home app for iOS and Android is launching in the next few weeks as a public preview, but you can sign up today to request an invite to try it out. 

Updates to the Matter Protocol 

Matter, the upcoming open-source smart-home standard meant to make your devices across different brands work more seamlessly together, is set to launch later this year, and Google says it’s injecting Matter support into many of its products. The idea is that you’ll be able to buy a smart-home device and use any voice assistant or platform you like to control it—Alexa, Google Assistant, or Siri.

Later this year, Google will bake Matter support into Android. Phones will automatically detect a Matter device and will set it up quickly, with minimal work required on your part. All Google Home products will also support the standard by the end of 2022, including the original Google Home.

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