Welcome to the guide on how to use Google Assistant Routines. This post will be broken down into three parts: an example of one routine I already set up, what the triggers are used for that routine and lastly how to create a routine from scratch. First a quick overview of what Google Assistant Routines is.
Google Assistant Routines is essentially a way for you to give Google Assistant a command to your smartphone or Google Assistant smart speaker and automate multiple commands together.
For example, you can say a custom voice command and have multiple smart home products activate together at the same time or other actions like a Spotify playlist start and send a broadcast message to all your Google Home devices at the same time.
Sample Routines
In my case I have the Nanoleaf Elements, Nanoleaf Shapes, and Philips Hue Play Light Bar around my basement TV. Typically, to turn on these three devices with Google Assistant voice command, you would have to do it one by one, but with Routines you can do it all at once.
I setup a Routine so I simply say, “Gaming mode on.” Then all three product smart home lights turn on at the same time.
Building Sample Routine
To build this Routine you can simply open the Google Home app on your smartphone and tap “Routines” near the top. The easier way is to open the Google Home app and tap the voice Assistant button and say, “Google Routines.” You should immediately be presented with the option to open the Routines section.
For my above sample Routine, I set a “Starter” command for whenever I tell Google Assistant, “Gaming Mode On.” Then I added an “Action” to open the “Adjust lights, plugs and more” section and find the smart home lighting in my TV area. I then adjust the light settings to turn “on”. I added another Action that has Google Assistant reply to me saying, “It’s game time.”
Easy right? Let’s do another example by creating one from scratch.
Building New Routine
This time let’s build a Routine from scratch.
Open the Google Home app, tap the voice assistant button and say, “Google Routines.” Open the Routines option and hit the plus (+) at the bottom right.
At the top let’s name this Routine to “Morning”. The name can be anything, but we’ll put Morning as an example.
Hit “Add Starter” and you’ll notice a few options. For this example, we’ll select “At a specific time”. In this window we’ll set the time to 6:00am, select all weekdays and tap “Add starter” at the bottom right. You can actually have multiple things trigger your Routine, but we’ll just stick with what we set.
Back on your Routine setup screen select “Add action”. There are a bunch of options here with sub-menus but for now select “Play and control media” and then check “Radio” and in this box select “Edit Action”. Here you can set any radio station, I put in local radio station “680 news” and tap done.
For this example, because I’m playing a radio station, at the bottom of the Routine page there is a new option to choose which device will play audio. If you have more than one Google Home smart speaker, select the one you want to activate and play radio on.
Let’s add more actions for fun. Tap Add action and this time select “Adjust Home Devices”, check “Adjust lights, plugs and more”, and select “Edit action” in this box. In this new window select the desired device to trigger. I selected to turn off my closet light which is what I use as a night light for my kids if they wake up at night and enter my room.
Still in adjusting Home settings I also decide to adjust my thermostat to rise to 23 degrees.
Let’s call it a wrap for this sample Routine. To recap what this Routine will do is activate each weekday at 6am. It’ll then play 680 News radio station on my smart speaker, turn off my closet light and raise the thermostat temperature to 23 degrees.
Cool right? Well, I hope that helps as using Google Assistant Routines is easy but can be rather helpful to automate things in your home.
