Google Home Features Update 2 - Reminders, sleep timers, broadcast

What's happened in youtube , Josh said her here for six months later and we have a bunch of new Google Assistant features to go over today .

Now , during Google's October 4th event , Google not only announced some new hardware with the Google Home Macs and the Google home mini , which we just recently put a review out of .

If you haven't gotten a chance to see that review , I'll make sure to put a link in the description or just click the annotation in the video .

But Google also announced a lot of new Google Assistant features at this event , these new features make using the Google home devices even easier to use and much more practical .

First up reminders .

Now with reminders , you can ask the Google assistant on your phone as well as the Google assistant in your Google home devices to remind you of things in two basic ways .

Now , one of these ways it has worked before and the second way is a new way , the Google Assistant can remind you of something .

So the first way reminders works is you can ask the Google assistant to remind you where you left something .

For instance , you can ask Google to remind you that you left your wallet in your bedroom or your keys on the kitchen counter .

Now , the second way reminders works and this is the newest way to do reminders with the Google assistant is you can tell the Google Assistant to remind you on a specific date at a specific time of something .

Remind me tonight at eight PM to do the laundry .

Your reminder , do the laundry for today at eight PM is ready .

Do you want to save it ?

Yes .

Ok .

Reminder , save .

So when it's time for the reminder on the Google home and Google home mini devices , a white dot will appear on the devices and then the Google Assistant will actually announce that it has a reminder for a specific person .

I have a reminder for Josh .

What's the reminder ?

Hi Josh .

You have one reminder .

What are the flowers for my Elon Musk shrine for today at 6 53 PM .

You can check for updates like these at any time by asking what's up .

Now , if you have the Google Assistant app on your phone and this even works for iphones , of course as well , you'll actually get a notification from the Google Assistant when it's time for your reminder .

And if you use either Gmail or Inbox by Gmail , which I do in inbox by Gmail , your reminder is actually pinned in your inbox for you .

So the Google assistant really makes it hard to avoid these reminders .

It's a really great implementation to make sure that if you want to remind yourself of something , you're definitely not going to forget that you have a reminder .

Now , if you decide not to do a reminder at a particular time , that's ok , you can always ask Google what reminders you have later on .

And if you want to delete a reminder , just ask Google and it will go down the list of reminders you have if you have multiple and you can just tell it which one you would like to delete .

Now , let's look at another feature that Google announced at their October 4th event and this actually involves the assistant voice itself .

Google for the first time released , a male version of the Google assistant .

I'm working on some mind tricks for Halloween if you dare to try one , just ask .

So if you like the male version of the Google Assistant to either appear on your Google home devices or in your Google assistant app on your phone , simply open up the Google assistant app on your phone , go to the settings preferences and then assistant voice , then you can try out the new mail , assistant voice .

Now , the next feature to discuss involves calling a few months ago , Google made it possible to make phone calls from your Google home devices to basically any number in the US Canada or Mexico .

The only problem with that feature was originally when you tried to do this , the number that people would see when you're calling them would actually be like an unknown name , unknown number .

So most of the time people wouldn't actually pick up even though it was you actually calling them just through your Google home .

So during the October 4th Google actually announced a fix to this where you can go into your Google assistant settings and actually put in your own phone number which will display on the person's phone you're calling .

So they'll see .

It's actually you that's calling them .

Having your phone number show up in outbound calls , really makes this feature worthwhile and it makes it a lot more useful .

I've at least found in my personal experience , people are actually picking up the phone now with before they just automatically leave it to voicemail because they had no idea who was calling them .

Now , another really useful feature that Google announced at their October 4th event and it rolled out is being able to control your TV from your chrome cast .

So I say control your V , you've had the ability to play youtube videos through the Google home device on your chromecast , on your TV .

But now you actually have the ability to turn on the TV through the chromecast or turn it off and this all works .

Thanks to the magic of H D I ce C turn on the TV .

Play Google Homes .

Six months later , review on youtube on chromecast TV .

Sure .

Play in Google Home six months later .

Review on youtube on Chromecast from youtube on TV .

Ok .

Google Show Time .

Oh , sweet .

Oh , sweet .

I feel like a damn it now .

Not only will your Google Home and Google assistant devices turn on or turn off your TV , but when you're playing music through the TV , or through a speaker group , the Google Home will actually lower the volume of the speaker group when you're asking it a question .

So if you use the trigger word , which I won't say , because I don't want to trigger any of your devices .

If you say the trigger word , ask Google for a specific query , it will actually lower the volume of music or podcast playing so that you can actually hear Google's response , which before if you tried to hear Google's response while you were trying to play music or podcast , but also ask it a question .

It was kind of difficult to hear sometimes and you'd actually just have to tell Google to stop playing it and then ask it a question .

Now , speaking of speaker groups , let's run down a few features that you may not have known about .

They're not necessarily new , but that are pretty important when talking about speaker groups and cast devices with your Google home devices .

So if you want to play the radio , for example , on all of your cast devices , you can via tune in which I just kind of ran into I wanted to listen to a sports game on the radio instead of watching it .

And I just asked Google and share enough it , it worked really well .

So you can do that via tune in on your Google home devices .

Now , another thing you can do on cast devices now is of course , play the news on all of your cast devices , which I can't quite remember how long that's been supported for .

I know it wasn't originally , but now you can , except you still can't do podcasts on speaker groups which drives me crazy .

Take this example .

If you ask the Google home to play the NPR news summary , it will tell you sorry , playing podcasts on cast devices is not yet supported .

However , if you tell that same Google home device to play the news on the speaker group , it will do it .

And if you've selected the NPR news summary as part of your news rundown , it will play it on the speaker group , play the news on all speakers .

Here's the latest news from N PR news summary at seven PM today .

It just drives me crazy that we can't play podcasts yet .

I know this feature has got to be imminent .

It's gotta be coming if we can play news on speaker groups .

But I am just please Google enable this feature for us all .

It would make life so much easier to be able to just walk around my house and listen to a podcast .

I mean , I can already do it with music , can already do it with the news , but still can't do it with podcasts .

So the next feature I want to talk about is sleep timers .

Now , I know there's some very passionate fans out there who have been clamoring for a sleep timer on their Google home devices .

Well , I'm happy to tell you that you can now set a sleep timer with your Google home devices through the Google .

All you have to do is have some media playing , whether that be a podcast , music , et cetera .

And then tell Google to set a sleep timer and you can tell it how many minutes you want your media to continue playing before Google will shut it off .

Set a sleep timer for 25 minutes .

Kitchen home will stop playing in 25 minutes .

Now , unfortunately , the sleep timer is a bit abrupt .

I was trying it out with music and the music just stops .

I kind of wish Google would do a little fade out or something to make that transition a bit more smooth and less abrupt , but it still gets the job done .

Now , let's say you want to do sleep timer and you want to fall asleep to something other than music or podcast .

My suggestion for that would be just tell Google to play sounds of an ocean or sounds of a rain forest and then tell it to set a sleep timer .

Play .

Sounds of the ocean .

This is the sound of the ocean .

Now , last thing I'll mention about sleep timers is you need to have media playing first before you can set a sleep timer .

If you try to set a sleep timer , there's no media playing .

Currently , Google is just not going to allow you to do it .

All right .

Now , I know what you're thinking .

This video has gone on long enough that you're starting to see my five o'clock shadow .

Well , no , that's actually what's not happening .

Turns out right before I was going to publish this video last week , Google actually enabled one of the last features that they talked about at their October 4th event , which is the broadcast feature .

So I wanted to go ahead and include this feature in the video because it's one of my favorite new Google home features that they've put out .

And I think it's just really fun to talk about .

So how does the broadcast feature actually work ?

Well , it works either on your Google home or on the Google assistant on your phone and you basically say the word broadcast and then the rest of your message and it will broadcast that message .

Typically a recording of your voice across all of your Google home devices broadcast .

Hey , mom , don't forget to feed the pets while I'm on vacation .

Ok , mom , don't forget to feed the pets while I'm on vacation .

Now on your phone , you actually have two options for broadcasting .

If you just use your voice and tell the Google assistant to broadcast something , it's going to actually record you saying your message .

However , if you type the word broadcast and then type out your message in the Google Assistant app , it will then broadcast the message with the Google assistant voice , which I actually sometimes prefer because depending on where you are and the microphone on your phone , it may not sound great .

A recording of your voice being played across all of your Google Home devices .

Whereas using the assistant voice actually will always sound pretty good .

Hey , everyone don't forget to feed the cat .

Now the Google home will also do special actions based on trigger words that you say in your broadcast message .

So for example , if you want to announce to everyone in your residence that it's dinner time , you just say broadcast , hey , everyone , it's dinner time and what the Google Homes will actually do is instead of just playing a recording of your voice , it will actually ring a little dinner bell and the Google assistant voice will actually announce it's dinner time .

Another really cool situation that it also does this special sort of feature with is say you're coming home and you want to announce to everyone , hey , I'm on my way .

So if you say broadcast , hey , everyone , I'm on my way , Google will actually play this weird sort of drum beat and say Hey there , Josh is on the way on the way and that is all of the feature updates .

Thank you all so much for watching this entire video .

If you made it through a plus , if there's a feature , we didn't talk about that , we somehow missed .

Definitely let us in the comments and I'll make sure to put it in the next Google home features update , which at this rate will probably be in the next two weeks because Google has just been putting out so many new features recently , but until then , thanks so much for watching .

I'm Josh Tedder for six months later .