Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
Google is working on a brand new Home app with Gemini integration. My colleague AssembleDebug was able to trigger that new interface and showed off the spiffy redesign with streamlined tabs that merge favorites and devices under a new Home tab, and push settings up to the account switcher. There’s a permanent new “Ask Home” text box at the top to talk to your smart home via Gemini, ask about security camera activity and device statuses, execute actions, or even demand help when building automations.
All of this sounds great, and I can’t wait to test it out, but I can’t help but feel like Google is still missing out on more important and overdue updates to the Home app. Talking to Gemini is cool, but it doesn’t check all the boxes of what I expect from my smart home app. Instead, I wish Google would work on these six features.
What feature do you want Google to add to the Home app? 5 votes Customizable tiles and dashboard 0 % More powerful routines 20 % Device groups, not just rooms 20 % Support for more security cam brands 0 % Better scene integration 0 % Proper logs and device history 20 % All of the above 20 % Something else (tell us in the comments) 20 % Google Home is perfect as is for me. 0 %
Give me customizable tiles and dashboards
Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
Home Assistant has built a name for itself for many reasons, one of which is all the crazy dashboards people have been building to tailor their smart home to their needs. Meanwhile, Google Home’s dashboard hasn’t changed in years. Even the new app doesn’t bode well for this, as it seems like all you can control are favorites and the order they appear in.
I want the option to hide devices from my Google Home view. For example, all my Hue motion sensors showed up because I synced my Hue account with Google Home, but I don’t care to see if there’s motion detected or not. At most, I want to use them in routines, but not permanently in my device list.
I also wish I could resize tiles to half or double their size. Some, like the washer and dryer, don’t need to be this big. Some, like my Google Nest Audio, should be larger when something is playing and smaller when they’re not doing anything. I’d go as far as saying that I’d like more control over what I see in each tile (I’d like to see the CO2 level of my air quality monitor without opening it, for example) and what tapping it does, but that feels a bit too demanding.
And finally, and most importantly, I just want the option to organize all my devices. It makes no sense that the only sorting order for rooms and device names is alphabetical, with no way to sort by priority or frequency of use, unless I completely re-create my dashboard in Favorites.
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