Routines make it easy to accomplish a bunch of actions with just a single keyword on Google Assistant devices. Now, though, Google is making these even more accessible by allowing Android users to put Google Assistant routines on their homescreens.
While the feature isn’t rolling out widely just yet, a couple of users have reported that the Google Home app is now showing support for adding a shortcut to the homescreen on any Assistant routine. This button appears when editing any routine, and it apparently has a small pop-up, pictured below, when it appears for the first time.
In its most recent redesign, Google moved the ability to trigger routines from the main set of action buttons in the Home app to a larger menu, making it quite a bit more cumbersome to access them. Now, it seems like that might be paying off by making routines infinitely easier to access through shortcuts on the homescreen.
When added to the homescreen, Google Assistant routines appear with the icon seen in the app and the name. For presets such as “Good Morning” and “Bedtime,” the icon and name are predefined, though it seems like custom routines will have the same icon with different names.
As mentioned, it seems like this feature is only rolling out for a very small group of users — so far we’ve seen the report on YouTube above as well as a Redditor with the feature — and none of us at 9to5 have seen it show up yet. Hopefully, this rolls out sooner than later because it definitely seems like a useful addition!
More on Google Assistant:
- Google Assistant ‘spoken notifications’ now available on all wired headphones
- Hands-on: Google Assistant works better on Fitbit than most Wear OS watches
- Google Home 2.31 redesigns Media controls, can trigger Routines again
Author: Ben Schoon
Source: 9TO5Google
