After Google added pre-set Routines to the Assistant back in March, Google has unveiled the option to create your own custom routines. The downside to the new usability function is that it’s only available in the US.
The six pre-set Routines added in March are being joined by the custom routines which allow you to build your own custom routine that can interact with any of the Google Assistant’s one million Actions. Custom routines can be anything, for example a ‘Dinner Time’ routine you activate by saying ‘Ok/Hello Google, Dinner’s Ready’ which turns off the TV, turns on some ambient music and broadcasts ‘Dinner time’ to all the Google Assistant enabled speakers in your house.
Routines will also be able to be scheduled to run at a certain time using the Assistant app, or the Clock app for Android.
Speaking to Ausdroid at Google I/O, Lilian Rincon, Product Management Director, Google Assistant said about bringing Routines to the world outside the US
We’re absolutely aware that they’re not in other markets, it is definitely expect to have something. How soon we can get it out, depends on when the quality is there.
At this stage the support documentation for Routines still says that both the custom and pre-set Routines are ‘US only’. The only other change of note in the support page is that My Day has now been renamed to ‘Good Morning’.
We’ll hopefully see Routines in Assistant in countries outside the US, but we’ll have to wait for a little while longer.
I do kind of wonder why features like this have slow rollouts. Its not like they seem to have US specific elements like things like payments or restaurant booking things might have.
Oh good, just what I’ve been waiting for, more US-only functionality! ?