114 PCWorld APRIL 2020HERE’S HOW 10 GOOGLE HOME TIPS
to leave,” “OK, Google, I’m home”), and
announcing entertainment (“OK, Google,
the movie is about to start,” “OK, Google,
the show is about to start”).- SET UP ROUTINES
Google Home’s Routines are designed to
help streamline your life by triggering
multiple actions with a single command (or
at a certain time).
To manage and set up Routines, open
the Google Home app, tap the Routines
icon, and tap Manage Routines. Google
Home has six preset routines called Good
Morning, Bedtime, Leaving Home, I’m
Home, Commuting To Work, and
Commuting Home. The presets are pretty
straightforward: Trigger the Bedtime routine,
and Google Home will do things like put
your phone on silent, ask what time to set an
alarm for, and turn off your lights (if you have
connected lights). The presets are just
suggestions—you can fully customize
them with different commands, actions,
and media.
You can also set up your own custom
routines to do just about anything. To set up
a new routine, tap the plus symbol in the
Manage Routines menu and add the
command(s) to trigger the routine, the
action(s) to be performed, and the media to
be played. It’s also possible to set up
routines that are triggered by a specific
time/day—e.g., every weekday at 7 a.m.—
rather than a verbal
command.- RELAX
Google Home has its
own library of
soothing ambient
tracks at the ready
when you need
some background
sound to help you
sleep, meditate, or
just relax in general. If
you’re not picky
about the type of
sound you want to
hear, say, “OK,
You’ll need to assign routines to one of your Google Home smart devices. This
feature would be much more useful if you could assign a routine to the device
in the room you think you’ll be in when you need it to run.