At CES this year, Google announced a new feature to Google Home that both Alexa and Siri can’t do yet. Soon, Google Home will have the ability to schedule one-off commands, which are commands that will do something at a later time. That opens up some really interesting use cases that I’ll be trying. Here’s a few ideas:
- Turn off the lights in an hour
- Brew coffee in the morning
- Turn off the fans in the morning
- Turn on the Christmas tree lights at 5 pm
- Turn off the AC at midnight
There are a few caveats with this feature, as well. Google doesn’t support repeating commands over time yet. So commands like “Always turn off lights every day at 6 pm” aren’t supported yet. It’s also unclear if you can see what one-off commands you have issued anywhere, like within the Google Home App. I think it would be really useful to see what sort of commands are scheduled to run in the future.
The Smart Home wars between Voice Assistants continues! This newest feature for Google Home certainly puts some pressure on Alexa and Siri to add support as fast as possible. This also highlights a challenge for users of Voice Assistants. Today it’s very difficult to know what features are actually supported for each Voice Assistant. Stay tuned for more articles that will help you understand the differences between the big three.
Thanks to the below news sites for breaking the news.
