14 DAY TRIAL // Smart homes are the next big thing in tech, and companies like Google are currently investing heavily in this side of the market.
The living proof in this regard is a feature the search giant has recently released for Google Assistant, allowing it to run certain commands for your smart home at scheduled times.
If you don’t get why this is such a big update, the idea is as simple as it could be. If you’re currently owning a smart home, Google Assistant can do certain stuff at scheduled times without any input from the user.
So for example, it can be configured to turn on the lights, start the air conditioning, and other things, all based on actions that you can manually set up in the app.
“The Scheduled Actions feature allows users to conveniently schedule a smart home command to trigger at a later time. As a developer, you do not need to make any code changes or resubmit your smart home Action in order to enable scheduling. We strongly recommend that your test your Actions for the expected behavior, using example queries similar to ones below,” Google explains.
How to use this feature
The examples that Google provides provide us with a closer look at how everything works:
- “Hey Google, turn on the lights in five minutes.”
- “Hey Google, turn on the lights at 7 AM.”
- “Hey Google, turn on my coffee maker at 8 AM tomorrow.”
- “Hey Google, run my sprinkler in a week at 5 PM.”
The feature was originally announced at CES earlier this year and is currently gradually rolling out to users. So if you still didn’t get these capabilities, you should check again shortly, as the release seems to be advancing at a pretty fast pace these days.