Up until now, using the Google Home app, you could either give full access to your smart home devices to anyone staying in your home or none at all. This simple “all or nothing” approach may soon end as per new strings of code found in the Google Home app on Android.
Folks at Android Police have spotted a couple of strings in the Google Home app on Android that would provide the users with varying degrees of access to their smart home devices.
Notably, introducing new tiers of access to smart home devices will help the users to give a certain level of permission or limit the access of the guests staying at their homes, etc to control smart home devices.
Apparently, with the new feature, you can give access to the guest to the smart devices in their room only. This is a neat and convenient option, which should have been there in the Google Home app. But as they say, it better late than never.
Under the Google Home settings, when users visit the Household option, it will show a list of people in their home along with the usual option to invite another person.
However, after introducing this new feature, when you tap any individual in the list, it will display a new page called “Access Details.” This will show you the access level the contact has and which devices they can control.
This feature hasn’t been rolled out for the Google Home app yet
Apart from Access Details, there is another menu called Devices. It is yet to be populated with varied access options, and currently, it is still an “all or nothing” approach.
Tapping on the Access Details entry only shows a message that reads, “everyone in this home can view all activity and access all devices and settings.” This means that everyone has the role of a Manager.
As for the Devices menu, instead of showing you some message, it shows you a list of every single smart home device that is available in your house.
The way Google has structured the interface of both the menus, we expect Google to implement and give granular controls to its users. That said, the feature is still not available on the Google Home app.
At present, it only shows that everyone in the house has full control of every smart home device in the Home app. So, right now, all we can do is wait for Google to release the detailed options to users soon.
