An upcoming update to the Nest Hub and other smart displays powered by Google Assistant is about to roll out. It brings a lot of interesting new features like to help you wake up better with sunrise alarms, to give you a fun option on your home screen wallpaper, and to give you more tools to keep your family updated. Some of the features are already live for some users while the others are set to roll out in the next few days.
Once you’ve updated your smart display, you’ll be able to see the new alarm UI which includes the sunrise alarm feature. This means your display will slowly brighten in the morning to mimic the sun and help you wake up gradually. You’ll be able to set how long the effect will last, if your connected smart lights will brighten up along with the display, and if a tone should start off the sunrise alarm. The new interface also lets you adjust things like what tone it plays, what days it will repeat, snooze duration, etc.
For your ambient background on the display, you now get a new option: the Google weather frog. This has become a popular feature on smartphones and now smart displays can have it too. You can say “Hey Google, set up my photo frame or go to the settings and you can choose the weather frog from there. Other options of course are Google Photos, art pieces curated by Google, or some of the fullscreen clock designs. But if you want a frog enjoying the current weather in your location, you now have that option too.
For those with families, you now get a sticky notes feature to help everyone stay in touch using the smart display. It can be found in the newly-introduced Family tab where you can also find quick access to things like Family Bells, Life360 tracking, as well as activities for kids. The sticky note can be seen by tapping the yellow card or saying “Hey Google, add a family note”. You need to say the word family or else it will just become a regular note that is accessed on services like Keep.
Android Police says the alarm should be live for most users but the other features will arrive as part of a server-side change. Remember that smart displays will only install updates at night-time or when they’re rebooted.