Device triggers also continue to roll out to more and more users
Big things are happening in Google’s smart home ecosystem, starting with a revamped user interface for the Home app, which is still in the preview phase. Ahead of its widespread rollout, we saw the app extend the convenience of device triggers to some users last week. That feature is now making its way to even more Google Home users, alongside a new option for household routines.
When creating a routine on the Google Home app, you’d normally be taken to a screen where you select a trigger for the routine. The app now has a screen preceding this trigger picker, where you define if the routine is for personal or household use, as discovered by 9to5Google. The creator keeps edit access for personal routines, but other people can edit household routines. By default, Home and Away are now set as household routines.
Icons in the routine creation menu are also now slightly different for personal and household routines. Device triggers are seen widely in the menu to create the latter, and seem to be backwards-compatible with the now-discontinued Google Nest Secure system. However, the Home app reportedly refuses to conform to the dark/light mode set on the device.
Hopefully the availability of this new option will help smooth things over for busy households, where you don’t want just one person in charge of editing and creating all the requisite home automation routines. We’re not sure precisely why this is arriving alongside greater availability of device triggers, but hey — we’ll take ’em both.
