August DoorSense has gained Google Assistant support today in an expansion by the company to make the already existing Google Assistant integration more useful than it was when the support was initially added for the locks. As part of today’s integration, home owners will be able to ask Google if the door is closed. This is dependent on having DoorSense installed in the door in the first place, but it should be a handy feature for home owners that do have it who may be a little bit forgetful.
DoorSense is part of the latest versions of the August Smart Lock and the August Smart Lock Pro which is also gaining support for Google Assistant, which means if you have one of the older locks you won’t have DoorSense but you should still be able to tell Google to lock the door. Not only is this useful for anyone who might be across the room and simply doesn’t want to get up to lock the door, but if you’re just coming home and your hands are full, having Google lock the door for you makes it easy to secure your front door without having to put things down.
August says that it has also simplified the commands that users need for lock control. These might have already been simple to use but August apparently saw the need to simplify things even more for its users, and that’s likely a pretty good thing. With DoorSense now getting support for Google Assistant, Google’s digital assistant technology continues to grow into a well-developed and fleshed out platform for smart home control, bringing it ever closer to Amazon’s Alexa, though for some users Google Assistant may have been the better choice all along. Naturally, for this newly added Google Assistant support to work with the locks and DoorSense technology the lock will need to be connected to your home’s Wi-Fi network, which shouldn’t be a surprise as this is needed with any other smart home product which works with Assistant or Alexa. These features should already be live for home owners with August products installed and should be usable as long as you have a Google Home speaker or a phone with Google Assistant.