If you’re using one Google Assistant-supported device in your home but you have multiple family members using it, the Voice Match feature is very convenient and useful. Now the latest update from Google brings this feature to more devices, as well as the hotword sensitivity to avoid false triggers of the digital voice assistant. You can also now use third-party devices like Bose and Sonos as your default speaker. This is part of Google’s efforts to bring Google Assistant features to more devices and more people.
Voice Match teaches your Google Assistant to recognize different voices so it can give you personalized results like your schedule, reminders, traffic information, music preference, etc. Each smart speaker or smart display can recognize up to 6 people’s voices so it won’t be confused as to who is speaking to the device. Google Home and Nest products have been enjoying this for a while but now third-party speakers will also be able to use Voice Match.
There are a lot of cases of accidental activations of these smart devices and so Google brought hotword sensitivity. This allows you to tone down or bring up the device’s sensitivity to the triggering of “Hey Google”. You can adjust the sensitivity per device. They will be rolling it out to more devices over the next few weeks to lessen those times when you didn’t mean to trigger Google Assistant but you still did.
Lastly, you can now choose your default speaker in case you have multiple ones in your house or a room. You can choose any Google Assistant-supported speakers as the default, even if it’s a Bose or Sonos device. Go to your Google Home app, find the setting menu of the device and then tap it to become the default speaker, even if there’s a Google Nest Mini there in the same room.
These three new updates to Google Assistant-enabled smart speakers and smart displays will be rolling out this week. Google says they will continue working on more features to be able to bring Google Assistant to more people and devices.
