Just recently, Amazon rolled out follow-up commands for its Alexa voice assistant, which allows Echo owners to say a series of voice prompts without saying "Alexa" over and over again.
Google plans to rival that with Assistant routines, which now has gone live. The search company initially announced it in October 2017, with the feature enabling users to perform several tasks just by saying a single voice command.
Google Assistant Routines
Last month, Google provided more details about routines when it teased the approaching U.S. launch. Now, the support pages for Assistant has been updated to include routines, confirming that there would be six routines initially, called "Good morning," "Bedtime," "Leaving home," "I'm home," "Commuting to work," and "Commuting home."
Each routine contains a series of tasks that is activated by using only one prompt. For example, a user can configure the Good Morning routine so that if they say, "Hey Google, good morning," Assistant will put their phone on silent; adjust smart home devices; provide weather, calendar, or traffic information; or adjust the volume. Then it can also play some music, news, radio, a podcast, or an audiobook. There are different tasks for different routines, obviously. The Bedtime routine, for example, can be set up to give information about the next day's weather.
Find routines under the Home Control, Music and Shortcuts section on the Google Home or Assistant apps. It appears only the Good Morning routine is available for now, as Android Police reports, but the rest should go live pretty soon.
Specific Assistant Routines For Each Family Member
The great thing about routines is that they're unique for every voice inside the household, meaning multiple users can configure their own routines as they like it. This is possible thanks to Google Assistant's multi-voice support.
Make sure to check out the support pages to read more on what you can do with routines. It's worth noting that some smart home integrations don't work seamlessly yet. While some thermostats and smart lights might work, accessories from Logitech and other manufacturers won't be functional yet.
Google Assistant routines are a replacement of Google's My Day feature, it's worth mentioning. Users will see that the previous My Day menu has been replaced in the services list with routines. Similarly, the daily recap has been absorbed into the Good morning routine.
So far, reports say routines appear to be working on both iOS and Android. Expect them to be widely available in the coming days.
