Try These New Google Home Features

and it's always getting new features. Recently, Google sent me a bunch of gadgets so I could try out some new Google Home features, including Spanish routines, continued conversations, and more. So let's go through a few of the new features available on Google Home. Now. One of those is Spanish.

So you know that Google Home used to be able to translate Spanish, Well, now it can understand commands actually spoken in Spanish, and that's a big deal for a lot of people that want to speak to Google Home in a different language other than English. So if you want to set that up, all you have to do is open the Google Home app and tap menu. Then you go into Settings, select Preferences, and there will be

an option for Espanol. Next up, Continue Conversation. Now, this one I'm kind of torn on because I see the pros and cons of it. Now, a bit of background, Usually, when you want to activate your Google Home you have to say those hot words that start with okay or hey right. I'm not gonna say I'm here because I don't want to activate your phone or your speaker in

the background. But now with this new feature called Continued Conversation, you can basically continue talking to Google without saying the activation phrase every time. So that means you can say, what's the weather in Hawaii, and then you can follow up with how about next week? Or you know, maybe the weather in a different place, or you can just continue back and forth with your original query instead of

saying those keywords every single time. So it's more like a conversation with Google rather than that very specific here's my hot word and my question. Okay, here's another hot word, here's another question. Now. To set this up, you have to go into the Google Home app, hit the menu button, then more Settings, then you go into Preferences, and then

you tap continued Conversation to turn it on. Now, keep in mind, once you turn this feature on, your Google Home basically keeps listening even after it answers your original question, because it's waiting for a follow up question. Now. After a certain amount of time, it will time out and close the mic. But if you want to manually stop the conversation, you can say thank you or stop when you're actually finished. Now. In my testing, I don't know. I kind of like this feature because I like the

ability to go back and forth with Google. But at the same time, I find that in my house with a lot of people talking, the microphone pretty much stayed open the whole time because it kept interpreting things that we were saying. So you can try this out see if you like it, turn it off if you don't

like that continued conversation all right. Next up routines. These lets you get multiple things done by speaking just a single command, and they can be really handy if you set them up properly, so you can say things like your keyword and then I'm home, and this can turn on the lights, share your reminders, play your favorite music, and whatever else you want it to do. Google has six pre built routines that are right inside the app,

including good morning, bedtime, and leaving home. You can also build your own routines right inside the Google Home app, and it makes it pretty easy. First, you set a command using whatever words you want. Then you add actions, so whatever you want those actions to be, like adjusting the lights or turning on a smart plug. Then you can also add other things like you can have Google say details from your calendar or play a playlist. The

possibilities are really unlimited here. You can do what you want, and the Google app helps you kind of move along with your command. So it starts by saying, Okay, what do you want your command word to be? Then what do you want me to do? Here are some popular things you can do, so it gives you ideas. Of course, you are free to really make this your own, and this is going to take a little bit more work, but I think if you play around with it, you

can really find some useful things. So, for instance, for a bedtime routine, even though they've pre built one, you can kind of adjust what you want the music to be, how you want the lights to be adjusted, or what you want Google to tell you before you go to sleep. We built one in my TV segment to start popping popcorn by setting a routine called movie Night. So we had a smart plug. It's connected to a popcorn maker.

You can have the popcorn maker activate and You can even go as far as having your Chrome Cast connected to your TV start playing a certain movie that you want, although if you say movie night every Friday night and it plays the same movie, that'd be kind of weird. But again, you can have it play something like a YouTube playlist of the most popular videos. Whatever you want. And I've built a few of these mainly for my music.

So I have certain routines like play some country music, play some pop music, play some new music, play some chill music. And then what I have those routines do is those commands that I've customized actually link up to a specific Spotify playlist. So even though I'm saying play some country music, what Google Home does is it goes into Spotify and it shuffles a country playlist called hot Country.

So instead of saying something like Google shuffle the Spotify playlist called hot Country, all I have to do is say Google play some country music. See how that works. So that's a good one. Definitely check out the routines in the Google Home app. All Right, one final thing that I really like, and this has been around for a while, but it's called broadcast, and this turns your Google Home speakers into an old school PA system, so you can open up the Google Assistant app on your phone.

If you have an iPhone, you can download an app called the Google Assistant, or if you have Android, you can just activate the Google Assistant and then you say something like Google broadcast I'm heading home, and next thing you know, all your speakers will spring to life and

play a little recording of what you just said. Into Google Assistant, you can say something like Google broadcast, I'm headed home and I picked up dinner, so don't worry about it, We're having tacos for dinner, and every one of your speakers in your home will play that little recording. Now, a little word to the wise. I tried this out without telling my family what I was doing, and they were all kind of spooked because all of a sudden, the speakers in my house came to life and played

a little recording of me. So that was kind of weird. So tell people in your house before you actually use this command. Google also has some pre built messages and sounds that you can share automatically, so you can say things like it's dinner time and it will broadcast at dinner bell all kinds of fun stuff like that and you can see a full list of suggestions linked in the show notes. All right, so some of the products we use that Google sent us for testing the Google

Home Mini, the smart light bulb. Google sent us one from tp Link. I also like the ones from Lifix, but I find the most reliable ones are from Phillips Hugh. They also sent us a Wi Fi plug, also from tp Link. I've used ones from Wemo and also another company on Amazon called Greenie, and they are really cheap and they work just as well. And they also sent a Chrome Cast, which of course I already have in

my home. The chrome Cast can really be fun because you can use it to literally play things off of Netflix or play things off of YouTube. All you have to do is talk to your Google Home and it's a command like Google play Stranger Things on my living room TV. So the syntax is play the show that you want to see along with the Romecast device however you have that named, and your TV will spring to

life and play that show. It is very cool. Right now, you can't say the actual specific episode and season of the show you want to watch, but you can also search YouTube there you have it. Just some of the fun things you can do with the new Google Home features. If you want a full rundown and links to everything I mentioned, just go to my website. It is richon tech dot tv. And if you're loving the podcast, which I hope you play every single day, that is available,

I would love if you rted and reviewed it. It only takes a second. Just go into Apple Podcasts, search for my podcast and tap the write a review functionality. You can even just leave stars. That works too, but if you write something that's really nice, I'm Rich Dimiro. Thanks so much for listening. I'll talk to you real soon.