Google announced today that all Assistant-powered speakers are going to be getting a few new features that were previously only found on Google Home (or Nest) devices.
Basically, these third-party speakers will no longer be treated like a red-headed step-child.
Voice Match and hotword sensitivity settings make their way to other speakers
Previously, both of these features were only available on Google-made devices. Like the Google Home or Nest Mini. But now smart speakers like those from Bose or Sonos, are going to get Voice Match and hotword sensitivity settings. As well as default media device support.
Voice Match is a good one, as it’s going to use the data that Google already has on your voice from your smartphone and other products you use Assistant on. So that it doesn’t have as many false triggers. Which third-party speakers are known for doing – particularly more with Alexa than Google Assistant.
Hotword sensitivity is also going to help negate those false positives on the trigger word.
Some smart speakers already had these features, but Bose and Sonos stand out here. And that’s because the way these two implemented Google Assistant differently, so they didn’t have support for these until recently.
You can now choose your default speaker
If you have a lot of speakers around your home and multiple in the same room, then this is a brilliant feature that Google is now rolling out to other smart speakers. It is going to allow you to select a default speaker for music in the living room, or a default speaker for audiobooks in your office and so forth.
This is particularly useful if you have a Nest Mini and a Sonos Beam in the living room. You might want the Sonos Beam to always be the default speaker for music in that room. As the Nest Mini is just not that great, compared to the Beam. Though the Beam is also a lot larger.
You could do this already by saying “Play Big Sean on the Beam” but now you don’t need to say the last part. Just tell Google Assistant to play music, and it’ll automatically play on the Sonos Beam. Which is really nice to have.
You will be able to adjust these settings in the Google Home app on your smartphone. Just tap on the speaker and then tap on device settings. The option will be at the bottom of the page.