Google Assistant reminders are a useful tool if you’ve ever been even the least bit scatter-brained. Soon, Google is making it possible for you to send those reminders to other people. The new feature is being rolled out to users over the next month Google says, starting with countries like the US and UK. Specifically, select English-speaking countries will be the initial target and this includes Australia.
Reminders are already fairly robust. Using just your voice you can set simple reminders to pick things up or check out a certain restaurant. You can also take things a step further and have them repeat if you need them to be recurring. If you live in a shared space, sometimes you need to leave reminders for those you live with. That’s where this feature comes in.
Once users have access to it they will need to set up the Family Group feature. Reminders for other users won’t work without this. Once that’s done, any user you wish to send a reminder to will need to be a “trusted fellow assistant” user. This is opt-in, which means if the other person doesn’t agree to be a part of this group you won’t be able to send them reminders.
For parents who have kids, that obviously won’t be an issue, especially since families are who this is mostly intended for. Parents will however need to set up a Family Group at the families.google.com website. They will also need to make sure their child’s account is connected to the Family Link program. This particular step is only needed for kids under the age of 13. This is because 13 is the age restriction set or kids to access those assignable reminders.
Though this is a feature intended for families it won’t be limited to people who live in the same household. It will work for sending reminders to friends or people you work with too. Which means the reminders you send can be anything from an actual reminder to a lighthearted joke.
Imagine being in a different location from a friend on their birthday. Then sending them a reminder that lets them know you haven’t forgotten them. The possibilities are virtually endless here as this feature will work with scheduled reminders too. That being said, adding this feature also opens the door for people to send reminders too often. To prevent this, users will be able to add people to a block list so they aren’t getting the same reminder over and over.
You should also be able to remove people from the block list at any time in the future as well.
Initially the feature will work with phones and smart speakers like the Google Home or Google Home Mini. Google also says it will work with the Google Nest Hub Max, which means it should also work for other smart displays. Once this rolls out, it should make setting reminders for kids and teens that much easier, thus making the job of parenting a little easier too. Especially for parents who have forgetful kids.