Google announced the Google Home app redesign with a “customization and personalization a core principle” introduction. The app’s new redesign comes with a lot of new features and integration with other features like Material You. Google redesigned the Cameras, Lighting, Wi-Fi, and more tabs with the new update. You can now sign up for the Public Preview of the Google Home app. Here are the details about the Google Home app Public Preview.
Redesigned Google Home app
If you are interested in Google’s home applications, and you have some Google home devices, you can now sign up for the Public Preview of the Google Home app to experience the redesigned app. The company announced the public preview last month, and now it is available to sign up for. You can request an invite for the Public Preview within Google Home for Android and iOS.
To request an invite, open Settings and you should see “Public Preview” under “General.” Click “Request invite.” Google explains, “If you’re accepted, the Google Home app shows a notification that says it’ll soon update to Public Preview.”
New features coming in Google Home App
The tech giant added a lot of new features to the Home app:
- Favorites: Easily access your favorite devices and actions. This includes the ability to favorite your cameras, so you can view your live streams right when you launch the app.
- Spaces: Quickly access groups of similar devices, such as lights.
- Devices: Find all of your devices and easily check their status
- Refreshed camera and timeline views:
- Vertical video history timeline: Quickly scrub through hours of video history or jump to live view.
- Event Views: Access a list of events and scrub to an exact moment. See the video in landscape mode on your phone or tablet.
- Quick actions: See and talk to anyone in front of your camera or doorbell with live or pre-recorded messages. Call emergency services (U.S. Nest Aware subscribers only), access device settings, and download any event to your phone.
- Media mini player: See what’s playing in your home and adjust the volume or access the remote.
- Activity: Review what happened in and around your home.
- Settings: Find and manage devices, services, and home members.
Google also identified some “known issues” with the redesign and update:
- You will initially be able to favorite your devices and actions on the Favorites Tab, but not your Automations. The ability to favorite your automations will be rolling out shortly.
- The New camera controller experience (with live and vertical history views) is only available for Nest cameras and doorbells that were set up using the Google Home app. These include Nest Cam (battery), Nest Cam with floodlight, Nest Cam (indoor, wired), Nest Doorbell (battery), and Nest Doorbell (wired, 2nd gen). Support for older cameras is coming soon.
- The redesigned Google Home app does not support a number of older devices (ex: Nest Protect) from the Nest App.
- Upon reinstallation, the app may revert to the old experience on the first start. Subsequent starts will restore the public preview experience.
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