Google appears set to make access to Smart Home controls a little easier, with several recent breadcrumbs all pointing to a hopeful and less fragmented future. Today we’re getting a look at a potential feature coming to the Pixel Stand that would see a Home Control dashboard appear on your phone’s display.
In an APK teardown, 9to5Google has noted the building blocks of a new Pixel Display UI that could replace, or perhaps work in tandem with, the Google Photos screensaver that pops up when your Pixel is charging on the Pixel Stand.
There’s no screenshots of the UI, rather just hints at a shortcut based style UI.
If that sounds familiar, it should – we heard similar earlier this week – a similar feature may be coming to the power menu of Android 11.
Hopefully all of these UIs will be consistent with what we already have. It should look like the smart home controls seen in the Google Home app, itself similar to “Home View” seen on Google smart displays.
Mobile devices go from from to room in your house though, and probably can’t tell which room they’re currently in — so a room-based approach to smart controls might not be where Google’s going with this.
With smart devices all over my house, I’d love to be able to create a custom remote. I’d have a small tablet on the wall of each room offering control of devices in that room… but I might be getting ahead of myself.
I’ll be watching the rollout of these features with great interest.
