If you have several devices at home that have support for Google Assistant, you can actually do a lot of productive and fun activities with your household. Google shares what these new things that you can use for your family are, just in time for this Mother’s Day weekend. This includes an expansion of the Broadcast feature to mobile devices outside of the home, support for more languages for Family Bell, and more stories and games for the kids (and adults too).
Broadcast is one of the most popular features for families using Google Assistant. Previously, you could send a message to all the smart speakers and smart displays in your house all at once. Now they’re expanding this feature to include all devices added in your Google Family Group, even those who are not in the house but have Google Assistant-powered devices like smartphones and tablets. They can also reply by tapping the reply button or using voice commands as well.
Family Bell is also another helpful tool you can use in your connected devices. You can set reminders for your family members to do chores or buy something and you can also use it as an alarm for things like recess, nap time, storytime, etc. Previously it was only available in English but now it will get support for eight new languages: Dutch, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish. You can also now ring across multiple devices at one time.
Parents and teachers know that they can have Google Assistant help them in reading stories to kids. They have partnered with Pottermore Publishing to bring more Wizarding World stories so you can say things like, “Hey Google, tell me a Quidditch Story”. They’re also bringing the “Who Was?” series from Penguin Random House so kids (and adults) can listen to stories about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Ida B. Wells, and other heroes”.
You can also now play “Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?” on the Nest Hub and ask it to sing songs to kids like the sleep song or the brush your teeth song. And on Mother’s Day on May 9, try using a timer and Google Assistant has a surprise for you.