Google Home secretly had my favorite Alexa feature from the start. Here’s how to find it

No smart home assistant is perfect, not even Google home, so it’s easy to think the grass looks greener in the pastures of Alexa. That’s why I love it when I figure out how to get Google Home to do the things I envy the most on Amazon Alexa. Since using Google Home, my biggest pet peeve is that it’s so talkative compared to Alexa. But I came across a simple workaround that makes Google Home go silent as well.

The problem is, every time you tell Google Home to control one or more smart home devices, it always wants to repeat what you said to you. “Hey, Google, turn off my desk lamp,” I might say. “OK,” Google Home replies. Then, as the light darkens, he adds, “Turn off a light.” Annoying!

Alexa has a setting called “letter mode“It removes all the extra chatter and just beeps to indicate it heard you, but Google doesn’t have such a feature. Or so I thought.

It turns out that there is a way to shut down Google Home when controlling smart home devices. However, there is a small problem: it only does this for devices identified as “lights”. I will explain your options to deal with it shortly.

But first, here’s how to set up Google Home so that it doesn’t annoyingly repeat every command you give it.

Google Home rings when using lights in the same room

Separating your gadgets into rooms can help you visually organize your smart home gadgets in the Google Home app, and offers another hidden feature. When you tell a Google Home device in a particular room to turn one or all of the lights in that room on or off, rather than saying “OK, turn off X lights,” Google Home turns off.

When you first set up a new Google Home speaker or smart display using the Google Home app, it prompts you to choose a room to put it in. However, when you connect other smart home equipment, like Philips Hue bulbs or one August door lock, the Google Home app groups them all at the bottom in a section called Linked to you.

If you want Google Home to “ding” to confirm, you need to take your other gear out of that gadget graveyard and into a designated room with your smart speaker. (Note that if you want to control the lights in a different room in the house than the one you’re in, you’ll still get full confirmation.) Here’s how to place your devices in a specific room:

1. Tap one of the devices listed under Linked to you.

2. At the bottom of the next screen, press the button labeled Add to room.

3. Choose from the list of available rooms (Living room, Cooked and so on.) or scroll down and press Add a custom room to name your room something unique.

One possible method: put everything in one “ room ”

If you don’t want to worry about dividing your devices by room, or if you want to be able to control the lights in the house with a brief confirmation from Google Home, all you have to do is put everything in a really big size. room. Pick a room from the list or create a custom room called something like “Whole House” and just throw in all your Google Home gadgets and other smart home gadgets. If you’ve already assigned devices to other rooms and want to consolidate, here’s how to rearrange a device:

1. From the main menu of Google Home app, tap the device you want to move, and then tap the Settings button (the gear icon) top right.

2. A few lines down, press Bedroom, then on the Choose the room screen, press the Last name of the room you want to move this unit to, and then press save.

What to do with devices that are not lights

I’m not quite sure the logic behind Google’s decision to only ring when controlling lights in the same room, but to continue to be annoyingly chatty when you turn other devices on or off (maybe because lights have an obvious visual cue that other things might not?) Anyway, there are a few ways to deal with this, although none are without compromise. But first, here’s how to change the device “type” in the Google Home app:

1. From the main menu of Google Home app, tap the device whose type you want to change, and then tap the Settings button (the gear icon) top right.

2. Tap Device type and choose a different one than the one selected.

When you return to the main menu, you will see that the icon associated with this device has also changed.

Option 1: make everything a light

The advantage is that you can still call the device whatever you want, for example “Space Heater”, but by changing its “type” to “light”, Google will now simply ring to confirm when it turns it on or off. ‘off. The downside here is that if you tell Google Home to “turn on the lights,” it will also, in this example, turn on your heater, which you probably don’t want. You can work around this particular limitation by creating a routine that only turns the actual lights on or off, but if you’re going to be diving into routines, you might as well go for option 2, below:

Option 2: create routines for all non-lights

Another way to avoid talkative Google Home confirmations is to create a specific routine for the command you want to use. It can get exhausting if you do this for every light bulb or smart socket in your home, but most of them are lights and you only have a few other types of devices (like a heater, coffee maker, or a wax heater)) it’s not too complicated to set up some routines for them. Consult our more complete guide on how to create custom routines here.

Looking for more not-so-obvious tips and tricks to try with Google Home? Check-out these five surprising things Google Home can do, this great Google Home feature hidden in plain sight and discover Google Home secret superpower here.