Google Assistant’s most helpful features arrive on more smart home devices
Hotword sensitivity adjustment and default speaker selection are included, too.
Some of Google Assistant’s most helpful features are coming to more smart home devices this week: Voice Match, default speaker selection and the ability to adjust hotword sensitivity. In April, these well-needed upgrades were added to quite a few devices. Google announced today that they’ll be coming to all Google Assistant-compatible devices in the next week. Adding these features to third-party devices is part of Google’s plan to “bring Google Assistant features to everyone globally.”
The most helpful of these features is Voice Match, which recognizes your voice to provide you with information personalized for you. For instance, if you ask Google Assistant for a traffic report, you’ll hear details of your commute; if your spouse asks, they’ll hear about theirs. You can teach Google Assistant to recognize six different members of your household. Choosing a default speaker does exactly what it sounds like; it allows you to pre-select which speaker your music comes out of. The hotword sensitivity setting lets you adjust how responsive your device is when you say, “Hey Google.” If your device has trouble hearing you when you activate Google Assistant, you can make it more sensitive. You can dial down the sensitivity if you find your booming voice activating a device in the other room.
This announcement isn’t very specific as to when this week you’ll see these updates, but a week-long window is a much shorter timeframe than a lot of other Google updates we’ve seen. Just keep refreshing and it should arrive sooner than later.
