Google Assistant will be less talkative when controlling lights

This may have happened to you. You asked Google Assistant to switch off the lights for the evening so you can sleep. Google Home then answers back, probably a bit louder than you'd like, to confirm that it's turning off the lights... as it, well, turns off the lights. It seems kind of redundant and counterintuitive, doesn't it? Google has heard you and it's started rolling out a new feature. Assistant will no longer verbally confirm that it's turning off lights. Google Home will chime to let you know that it's processed your request, as long as it's in the same room as the lights. And it doesn't just work for turning off lights, it'll work for all light-related actions like dimming, changing colors, etc. It'll also work for switches and plugs identified as lights in Assistant's settings. Smart lights will reportedly be getting the new, quieter confirmation in the coming weeks. And this feature will supposedly work for all Assistant-powered speakers and displays, as long as the device is grouped in the same room in your account.

Source: Android Police 

Digital Wellbeing features spotted by some Google Home users

Looks like Google is taking its Digital Wellbeing features beyond Android 9 Pie and bringing it to its Google Home platform. Reddit user /u/alexanderbumpertramp spotted a new Digital Wellbeing option in the Google Home app. This feature is meant to help people curb smartphone addiction by showing how much time they’ve spent on their phones and do things like set app timers, help wind down usage at night, to name a few. There are currently two features available in the app: filters and downtime. Filter lets you add an age restriction and prevents non-registered users from playing media. Meanwhile, downtime blocks all voice commands during a specific time. This seems to be a staged rollout, though, so you might not see it for your Google Home device of choice just yet. We can’t say either if it’s coming to all Google Home users as sometimes these features get regional restrictions but we’re keeping our eyes peeled for any updates.

Source: XDA Developers

Google Chromecast and Home goes down due to backend issues

If your Google Chromecast or Google Home is fritzing, you’re not alone. A backend systems issue caused the outage for the two products for users from different parts of the world. As of 7:00 p.m. ET, TechCrunch reports that Google is working on the fix to the issue and are working to make sure this doesn’t happen in the future.

Here’s Google’s official statement on the issue as well as the fix it offers in the meantime as they work to bring everything back to normal: “We’ve identified a fix for the issue impacting Google Home and Chromecast users and it will be automatically rolled out over the next 6 hours. If you would like an immediate fix please follow the directions to reboot your device. If you’re still experiencing an issue after rebooting, contact us at Google Home Support. We are really sorry for the inconvenience and are taking steps to prevent this issue from happening in the future.”

Google Assistant can now provide more information about the rain

Google is continuously updating both Assistant and by extension Google Home with more features. One of the newest thing the company seems to be testing out is related to the weather—or rain, to be specific. Previously, when you ask Google Assistant if it’s going to rain, it’ll give you a yes or no answer. Now, it’ll be able to provide more information. It can tell you when exactly it’ll rain and if there will be a break from it. A lot of Reddit users have confirmed that this feature is rolling out for some people and it is coming to Google Home users, too. Here’s to hoping this rolls out to more users.

Source: XDA Developers