New starters, conditions, and actions are making Google Home more powerful

If you use Google Home to help with automation, there are new options coming your way. Google has announced the addition of new starters, conditions, and actions which it says help to give more granular control.

The various combinations allow for a huge degree of flexibility and personalization. With the Google Home ecosystem continuing to expand to include more products, users are becoming more demanding of what the system can do – and Google seems to be responding.

Writing on X, Anish Kattukaran – Chief Product Office, Gemini for Home, Google Home and Nest – says: “We’re rolling out a new batch of ~20 starters, conditions, and actions in the Google Home app to give you more granular control”.

The full changelog for this update is as follows:

Added features for home automations

We are constantly improving our automation editors and abilities. Today we are releasing the below additional starters, conditions and actions.

Starters/Conditions:

• 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…”

Actions:

• 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.

We are continuing to expand support for home automation capabilities so make sure to check back for updates to our release notes and Supported automation starters, conditions & actions.

Easier feedback flow for AI descriptions

Our AI description feature is currently in Early Access, and we’re so grateful to have you on this journey with us. To help us get it just right, we’ve made it easier than ever to share your thoughts.

You can provide quick feedback with our feedback button in the event detail page now. You can also give a quick thumbs up or down or report a missing familiar face directly from the Familiar Face banner.

With Kattukaran making reference to more controls landing in the coming weeks, it seems that this is an exciting time to be a user of Google Home.

What do you think of this latest update? Do you have any wishes for future additions? Share your thoughts in the comments below.