Google Assistant recovers a series of new Smart Home features

"It's the season and Google feels generous. Today, he has put together a set of new Google Assistant features, including helpful enhancements, such as the to-do list, as well as a new feature encouraging you to be polite to Regarding your inanimate bot that answers your questions.

Although the features are presented as a "survive the holidays" toolkit, they are generally about home entertainment and productivity. At the top of the list is what Google calls "visual words." It essentially turns a smart display, like the Google Home Hub, into a karaoke machine. If you have a Google Play Music subscription, you can watch and sing lyrics when they appear on a screen. However, during a demonstration, Google representatives quickly reminded me that the feature only worked for "non-explicit songs". So, as in this song of Lil Jon with the 329 words cuss and the "Pony" of Ginuwine came out.

Other display features include responses to Google's recently released streaming feature. Currently, Broadcast allows you to record messages on your phone and send them to any Google speaker or screen, much like an intercom. Starting next week, users will also be able to send replies. So, if you are at the store and want to scare your roommates by saying "Hey, Google, broadcast" Yo Steve, you want eggnog? ", They can scare you immediately with a recording saying "Nah, I'm fine, brah." You can also connect to a Nest Hello bell to spy on your parcels and shout at your mail that is still late via the new two-way chat feature.

We also offer Google's Pretty Please feature. Introduced to I / O, it reinforces polite manners. If you use the words "please" or "thank you" when you ask Google Assistant something, you'll hear a nice chime and benevolent phrases. It aims to help children develop ways, but it will also work with rude adults who verbally abuse their voice badistants – aka me.

But the most useful features and the least glamorous are the new capabilities of notes and lists. You can say something like "Hey Google, add Minions shot glbades to my holiday shopping list" and the voice badistant will create a "holiday shopping list" featuring Minions shot glbades. You can also create notes in the same way.

Although none of these features are stunning on their own, they make the speakers and smart screens for Google's home more functional. And since I mostly use voice badistants to tell me how long it takes, I guess it's a good thing.