Maximize Your Smart Home Experience with These Hidden Tips and Tricks

Google Home is Google’s innovative smart home platform that seamlessly integrates your smart speakers, lights, plugs, locks, and other appliances across your house. Whether you use a simple voice assistant and a smart bulb or have a complex web of devices whose actions you’re looking to automate, you’ll want to consider these hidden gems to make your smart home work for you.

1. Enable Night Mode to Keep Your Devices from Waking People Up

Google speakers and displays come equipped with a Night mode that lowers their volume and dims their display lights during set ‘downtimes.’ This allows you to use your voice assistant without disturbing the peace or waking kids who are sleeping. To enable Night mode, tap ‘Home’ > ‘All devices’ and long-press your device’s tile. Then, tap ‘Settings’ > ‘Notifications & digital wellbeing’ > ‘Night mode’ and toggle the switch to ‘On.’ From here, you can choose when downtime begins and ends and select which days of the week to apply Night mode.

This feature is especially useful for households with young children or pets that are sensitive to noise. By setting a Night mode, you can ensure that your devices don’t disrupt the peace and allow everyone in the household to get a good night’s sleep.

2. Use Guest Mode to Keep Your Profile Private from Visitors’ Queries

If you have visitors over for dinner or house guests staying for an extended period, you may want them to be able to interact with your smart speakers and displays without affecting your algorithm or compromising your privacy. When Guest Mode is turned on, Google automatically deletes recordings and voice assistant activity and disables personal results, such as information collected from your Gmail and Google Calendar. This prevents other users from requesting sensitive information—like calendar events, contacts, and reminders—from your device. You can still control your smart home, play media, and query your assistant in Guest Mode. To enable or disable this setting on a specific device, simply say ‘Hey Google, turn [on/off] Guest Mode.’

Guest Mode is a convenient feature that allows you to share your smart home with others without compromising your personal data. By using this feature, you can ensure that your visitors have a seamless and enjoyable experience without putting your privacy at risk.

3. Designate Household Contacts So Anyone Can Use Your Speaker to Call for Help

Your smart speaker comes in handy for hands-free calling, and you can set up household contacts so anyone—including kids, babysitters, and guests—can reach important numbers even if they haven’t set up voice match. All they have to do is say ‘Hey Google, call [name or nickname]’ to make a call. You can add emergency contacts for when you’re away or simply make it easier for those at home to place calls to numbers they don’t have memorized. In the Google Home app, tap your profile icon, then go to ‘Home settings’ > ‘Communication’ > ‘Household contacts.’ You can tap ‘Add Person’ if the contact isn’t already listed.

This feature is especially useful for households with young children or elderly family members who may need assistance with emergency calls. By setting up household contacts, you can ensure that your loved ones can reach help quickly and easily.

4. Use Your Speaker as a Memory Vault to Keep Track of Items You Often Misplace

If you often find yourself wondering where you put that random item you were sure you’d remember but cannot find, you can offload this mental burden to Google Home. Your speaker can maintain a voice notepad and repeat information back to you later. This is especially useful for keeping track of items you use seasonally (like holiday decor), remembering where you keep important documents or various tools for home maintenance projects, or simply monitoring keys and wallets. Use a command like ‘Hey Google, remember that…’ to add items to your list.

This feature is especially useful for households with multiple people who may need to keep track of different items. By using your speaker as a memory vault, you can ensure that everyone in the household stays organized and on top of their tasks.

5. Use Device State Triggers to Create an Automated Theater Experience

If you have your media player or smart TV and lights connected to Google Home, you can set up an automation that turns your den into a home theater—dimming your lights and closing your shades as soon as you turn the TV on or hit play. In the Google Home app, go to the ‘Automations’ tab and tap ‘Add’ > ‘Add starter.’ Choose ‘When a device does something,’ select your smart TV or speaker, then choose the state you want to use as the trigger (such as when the TV turns on or the device is muted or unmuted). Tap ‘Add action’ > ‘Adjust Home Devices,’ select your lights and/or shades, and set them to the preferred brightness or closure. Label the routine and tap ‘Save,’ then make sure the routine is toggled on.

This feature is especially useful for households who love to host movie nights or game nights. By setting up an automated theater experience, you can create a seamless and enjoyable experience for your guests without lifting a finger.

6. Set Up Visual Alerts for When Your Laundry or Dishwasher Finish Running

Another way to use state-based automations is to have your speaker or lights announce when another appliance’s task is complete—for example, if you’re in your home office, you can set your smart bulbs to blink when the washing machine cycle is over so you know it’s time to move clothing to the dryer. This follows the same process outlined above: go to ‘Automations’ > ‘Add’ > ‘Household’ > ‘Add starter’ > ‘When a device does something.’ Select your smart appliance first, then select ‘Stops’ or ‘Finished.’ Then tap ‘Add action’ > ‘Visual Cue’ or ‘Audio Announcement.’ You can also add conditions if you only want the automation to run during certain hours (so your speaker doesn’t wake people up at night, for example).

This feature is especially useful for households with multiple people who may need to keep track of different appliances. By setting up visual alerts, you can ensure that everyone in the household stays on top of their tasks and knows when it’s time to switch loads.

7. Sync Your Lights and Alarms for a Gentler Wake-Up

Loud alarms are a jarring way to start the morning, but if you have a smart lights and a Google speaker or display, you can enable Gentle Sleep and Wake, which slowly brightens your lights over a 30-minute period before your alarm sounds. There are several voice commands for Gentle Wake depending on how many lights you want to enable, and you can sync with an alarm (consider selecting a softer, ambient option) so that the light routine will run any time you set an audio alarm. If you have a Nest display, you can also go to ‘Alarms’ > ‘Set an alarm,’ toggle on ‘Sunrise Alarm,’ and customize the lights, timeline, and sounds for your wake-up routine.

This feature is especially useful for households with young children or pets that are sensitive to noise. By using Gentle Sleep and Wake, you can ensure that everyone in the household gets a gentle and peaceful wake-up experience.

8. Ask Gemini to Build If/Then Automations Using Natural Language

Building automations manually can be cumbersome, and you may not even know what your smart devices are capable of in order to do so. But if you have a Google Home Premium subscription and Gemini for Home enabled on your account, you can simply describe what you want your devices to do, and AI can build the routine for you. The ‘Help me create’ feature works with natural language prompts, and it can also suggest automations based on what you have available in your Google Home app. Go to ‘Add’ > ‘Automations’ > ‘Help me create,’ and speak or type the command. Tap ‘Create,’ and follow the prompts to adjust or save the automation.

This feature is especially useful for households who are new to smart home technology or who have complex automation needs. By using Gemini to build if/then automations, you can create custom routines that work seamlessly with your devices without needing to be a tech expert.

9. Ask Gemini to Analyze Camera Footage for Troubleshooting Problems

Instead of scrubbing through hours of Nest footage to figure out what’s going on in and around your home, you can ask Gemini to search your video history and give you a summary based on your query. This is useful for day-to-day events, like figuring out what time your dog walker typically arrives and leaves, though you can also ask things like ‘Did something eat my plants?’ to figure out what animals are destroying your garden and troubleshoot accordingly. The ‘Ask Home’ feature is part of Gemini for Home and is available to Google Home Premium Advanced plan subscribers.

This feature is especially useful for households with security cameras or pet cameras. By using Gemini to analyze camera footage, you can get a quick and easy summary of what’s going on in and around your home, and you can use this information to troubleshoot problems and stay on top of your tasks.

10. Use Privacy Settings and Commands to Prevent Your Recordings from Being Stored

Connected devices in a smart home inherently introduce privacy risks, but you can, at the very least, keep Google from storing voice recordings gathered via your speaker or display. From your Google Account, go to ‘Data & Privacy’ > ‘Web & App Activity’ and uncheck the box next to ‘Include voice and audio activity.’ While you’re at it, Google recently updated its privacy settings for Search, so you should go in and customize what it has access to under ‘Search Services History’ and ‘Personalized Recommendations.’ You can also ask your voice assistant to delete the last thing you said or activity over a specific time period with commands like ‘Hey Google, that wasn’t for you.’

This feature is especially useful for households who are concerned about their online privacy. By using Google’s privacy settings and commands, you can ensure that your voice recordings and other sensitive information are not stored or shared with third-party companies.