You will hear pleasant chimes rather than verbal feedback for more device types
Google Assistant can sometimes get unnecessarily wordy. This was fine until a few years ago when smart home accessories and voice assistants were not prevalent. But this is no longer the case, and so Assistant’s regular verbal responses every time you control a smart home accessory can get irritating. This is especially true when turning on/off multiple accessories in the same room back to back. Google recognized this was a problem back in 2019 itself and made Assistant play a chime when controlling smart lights. Now, Google is expanding the use of chime to acknowledge more smart home commands.
Going forward, when you use Google Assistant to control your smart fan, blinds, or other smart home accessories, it won’t talk back to you to confirm the action has been triggered. Instead, it will simply play a chime to acknowledge. Google says it is making this change based on its internal trials and feedback from the Nest community.
Google has highlighted the different smart home device categories in its announcement for which chimes support will roll out in the coming weeks:
- Outlets
- Switches
- TVs
- Speakers
- Fans
- Blinds
- And more!
Do note that Assistant will only play a chime if the devices are grouped in the same room in your account. And the chime will play for any Assistant command you use to control your smart home device, and not just for turning them on/off.
Since this is a server-side change from Google, you won’t have to do anything on your part. This new behavior of Google Assistant should automatically be available to you over the next few weeks. It would also be nice if Google provided an option to make Assistant play a similar chime for most other commands.
