Google has been constantly working on improving the Google Home experience, pushing out major updates to the app every couple of weeks. These updates typically add new features or fix some notable lingering bugs. With its first update of 2026, Google is taking things a step further by making home automations in Google Home even more powerful.
Anish Kattukaran, the Chief Product Officer for Google Home and Gemini for Home, announced the addition of 20 starter conditions and actions in the Google Home app. This will enable you to create more complex and granular smart home automations.
For example, as the Google executive highlights, you can now create an automation that automatically dims the lights to 50% if your TV is playing media. Similarly, you can create an automation to arm the security system at 10:00 PM every day.
Below are the full release notes for Google Home’s latest round of improvements:
- Control volume on your media device: e.g. “When the volume is 50…”
- Control playback on your media device (playing, not playing, paused, buffering): e.g. “When the speaker is paused…” or “If the TV is playing…”
- Set the brightness to a specific level: e.g. “When the brightness is above 80%”
- Check the state of smart appliances* (stopped, running, paused, error): e.g. “When the washer is running…” or “If there is an error…”
- Turn specific device on or off: e.g. “…turn off the coffee machine”
- Arm a security system ( no disarm yet): e.g. “…arm the security system”
- Open and close a blind: e.g. “…open the living room blinds”
- Set robot vacuum to pause, resume, or dock: e.g. “…pause the vacuum” or “…dock the vacuum”
- Start, stop, resume, or pause smart appliances*: e.g. “…start the coffee machine ”, “…stop the washer” or “…pause the dryer”
- Control light effects on smart bulbs (stop light only): e.g. “…stop the light effect”
*Supported on select devices such as washers, dryers, and coffee machines. This is currently unsupported on smart ovens, robot vacuums, and robot mops.
Essentially, you can now build routines with triggers related to media playback, volume level, and whether a smart appliance is running, paused, or stopped. As for actions, you can turn specific devices on or off, resume or start/stop smart appliances, etc.
More triggers and actions coming soon
Anish says Google will release even more actions and triggers in the next few weeks.
The new home automation triggers and actions are available as part of Google Home 4.6.55.1 for Android. As this is a staged rollout, it may take a while to show up on your phone.
