Rita Al-Khoury / Android Authority
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TL;DR
- Google is updating the Home and Gemini app with the latest smart home fixes.
- Gemini should no longer complain about misunderstanding orders that she never gave.
- A number of fixes aim to resolve performance issues related to the cameras in the app.
As anyone who’s built a family around Google Home can attest, the service can feel like it’s constantly in a state of flux. New fixes arrive all the time, and today Google just shared news that a big wave of updates has arrived for the company’s devices. But that’s only half of it, and Google is also telling us about the latest improvements coming to Gemini and the Google Home app.
Google published almost overwhelming Home change log Earlier today, details of repairs and upgrades over the past two weeks were provided. Some of them sound a little familiar, like Gemini’s promises to understand us better — and here, specifically, Google stops devices saying “sorry, I didn’t understand” in response to absolutely nothing.
We’ve got some media-related upgrades, including smarter responses to requests to move music playback from room to room, and fixes for misunderstanding commands to change volume levels. If you’re a YouTube TV subscriber, voice commands should start working better when watching on smart displays.
Remember that issue about Pixel users missing alarms from the other day? Google is fixing something that sounds very similar to smart home devices here, correcting an issue that could result in the alarm volume being incorrectly set to zero. It’s also trying to solve device confusion over the distinction between regular timers and sleep timers for media playback.
Sanoj Bhatia/Android Authority
If you have a lot of Matter devices connected to your smart home, Google has some changes worth your attention. Matter-compatible smart plugs will now be able to share cumulative and real-time energy consumption with the home. Google is also finally learning to differentiate between all types of doors and windows when it displays icons for related Matter devices.
Google continues to improve the Smart Camera experience on Home, resolving some performance issues when swiping on iOS or opening or closing foldable devices running Android. Familiar Face Detection is also getting some improvements to the wired Nest Doorbell.
And then we have a ton of general bug fixes, fixing bugs with device rotation, handing out long home names, displaying online status, and a whole bunch of UI cleanups. For full details, see the changelog link above.
