116 PCWorld FEBRUARY 2019HERE’S HOW 15 GOOGLE ASSISTANT COMMANDS
know there’s a pending reminder. Just say
“Hey Google, what’s up?” to get details.- SET A TIMER OR ALARM
Need a better alarm clock? That’s Google
Home. Tell Assistant to “Set an alarm for
[time],” and you’re done. You can also set a
recurring alarm by saying “Set an alarm for
every [Monday, weekday, Saturday...] at
[time, a.m. or p.m.].” If you’re a Google Play
Music subscriber, you can set an alarm that
wakes you up with music, instead of a
general alarm tone. Just say “Set [artist name]
alarm for [time, a.m. or p.m.).”
Google also offers a limited number of
“character” alarms (the list is short, you can
choose from characters in the Lego or
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles universes). Just
say “Set a character alarm for [time, a.m. or
p.m.]” and Google Assistant will ask which
character you’d like to hear from.
When the alarm goes off, you can tell
Google to stop the alarm or to snooze it for
however long you want. The alarm will
sound for 10 minutes if you don’t end it
earlier. Since smart speakers don’t have
battery backups, it might be a good idea to
plug the one you’re using as an alarm clock
into an uninterruptible power supply, in case
there’s a power outage.
To set a simple countdown timer, just say
“set a timer for [seconds, minutes, or hours].”- REMEMBER THINGS
This command is slightly different from a
reminder, as it’s not necessarily related to a
time or date. Your squishy human brain is
fallible, but Google Home can remember
things for you, and it never forgets—unless
you ask it to. Just ask your Google Home to
“Remember [X]” and it will tuck that factoid
away. For example, you can say “remember
my spare car key is in the kitchen junk
drawer.” Accessing this info is easy, just ask
Google Assistant what you told it to
remember. If you’ve asked it to remember
several things over time, you can be more
specific with your query: “Where is my spare
car key?” for example. - MATH WITHOUT A
CALCULATOR
Sure, there’s a calculator on your phone, but
you don’t even need to touch it to get the
Google Assistant can
wake you up to music
from your favorite
artists.