The ever evolving Google Assistant is picking up some new tricks today, with Google announcing that the Assistant is getting two new features: multi-lingual support and routines!
Australia is a multi-cultural country, so chances are a number of people speak or understand more than one language and now your Google Assistant can too. You can simply set whichever languages you use at work, home or any time and then the Assistant can automatically flip back and forth no matter which language you use on your phone, smart speakers and more.
Google is launching bilingual support in English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Japanese to start with, but will be adding more languages in the coming months.
Now….if you’ve been waiting for routines on Google Assistant, it’s finally coming. Launched in the US back in March, Routines expand on the functionality introduced in the My Day routine.
With this launch, Google is bringing six pre-set Routines initially launched in the US as well as Custom Routines to Australia.
The six pre-set routines are built around helping you at different times of the day including in the morning, your commute to and from work, when you’re leaving or arriving home and when you’re going to bed. The pre-set routines are a little restrictive in what they can do with only certain functions allowed within the confines of each routine – which is where custom routines come in handy.
Custom routines allow you to build your own routines around things you do, you can set one up for dinner time and have Google Assistant turn off the TV, send a broadcast to all your Google Home devices saying ‘Dinners ready!’ and then put on your favourite music. Google will even let you schedule custom routines, so you can set up an exercise routine to kick in at a certain time to help get yourself back in shape or a bedtime routine for the kids letting you turn on a night light, and broadcast a message saying it’s time for bed at a certain time.
To access both Routines and Custom Routines, open your Google Home app and go to ‘More Settings’ in the nav drawer, then scroll down to Routines. Routines replaces ‘My Day’ so if you’re still seeing it there it’s not yet rolled out.
To learn more about both Routines and Custom Routines, you can check out the Google Support page for the feature here.
I don’t get why it takes 6 months between new features being dribbled out to Australia.
When will continued conversation be available?
When will continued conversation be available?
Pretty excited about Routines. Hoping I can configure the Good Morning routine to do multiple things for me!
On a side note, ‘Turn off the TV’ command never works for me.
Is this support for custom routines? I’m really excited about that. Currently using ifttt but still this can simplify things.
Really hanging out for the handsfree voice calling feature they have in the States….but good to see more features coming
Finally I can let AI tell my kids to go to bed instead of having to do it myself! First world problems…