Advertisement

Google's Assistant will help 'sync' your smart home devices

A handy little phrase for smart home enthusiasts.

Smart homes can be tricky to manage, especially if you've invested in a bunch of different brands. If you have a Google Home, good news: You can now use the Google Assistant to clean up and "sync" any misbehaving devices. Let's say you have some Philips Hue lights in your living room — you set them up and everything works great. A few months later, you buy some extra bulbs for the kitchen, but your Home doesn't seem to recognise them. You could, of course, start poking around the appropriate apps, but now there's a voice command that will do it for you: Sync My Lights.

You can swap "lights" for another device type and it'll work just as well. Or mutter "sync my devices" for a full spring clean. In short, the command forces Google to check all of your Home-linked apps and services for new hardware. It's a small, but useful update if you're frequently adding or adjusting devices that haven't been built by Google or Nest. One day, every smart home will be smart enough to keep track of these things — until then, you can fix the occasional mistake by yelling at Google's Assistant.