How to Create Google Home Routines

The Google Smart Assistant is making news and attempting to give a stiff competition to Amazon’s Echo. While Google Home still tries to keep up with the advancements made by Alexa, the virtual assistant comes with the Routine feature to attract a larger base of customers. This may not be a revolutionary discovery since Echo has already rolled out this feature, it is still heartening to know that Google Home is evolving.

What are Google Home Routines?

What are Routines? You wonder. We hear you. When you say “OK Google” or “Hey Google” to wake up your Google Assistant, it is basically a shortcut for the device to turn on. Similarly, routines are a set of shortcuts that you can configure based on your requirements.

Google released Routines with six default preconfigured commands; namely, Good morning, Leaving home, Commuting to work, Commuting home, I’m home, and Bedtime. You could personalize these commands to fire off a set of actions. Earlier this year, Google announced that you could choose your own pet phrase to trigger a customizable set of actions!

Steps for setting up Google Home Routines

As awesome as it may sound, here’s how you can create Google Home Routine:

1. Open your Google Home app on your mobile device (Android or iOS)
2. Tap on the three vertical dots located on the top left corner. Choose “More settings.”
3. Find “Routines” and tap on the plus button on the lower right corner to set up a new routine.
4. Under the “When I Say” tab, select the “Add Commands” to assign the invocation phrase. You may even assign a string of phrases to invoke the Routine. Avoid anything long and tedious. On the other hand, you can accidentally trigger it if it is too short. Thus, a phrase of 2-3 words is of optimum length.
5. Click on the plus sign in the lower corner to add the actions. You can select the actions from the preset list or type in custom commands.
6. If you wish to add some audio or media to your Routine (say, reading out an Audiobook before bed) then tap on “Add media,” and the playback will be added to the actions.
7. You can customize the news, music, book, podcasts, etc. that you are interested in.
8. Tap on “Save” to add the Routine to your device and Google Home.
9. Repeat the steps if you wish to add another Routine.

Let your imagination run wild and set up as many Routines as you would like. You could set a separate Routine for each day of the week, or you could even store Routine for exceptional cases, like when you are running late for work, and Google Home could tell you the traffic situation on your route. Go ahead, set up a night schedule where on one command the lights are dimmed, the doorsare securely locked, the room temperature is set to optimum, and your favorite eBook is read out. With Google Home, life gets easier!

John Smith is a self-professed security expert; he has been making the people aware of the security threats. His passion is to write about Cyber security, cryptography, malware, social engineering, internet and new media. He writes for Norton security products at www.norton.com/setup.