Google Home update brings long-requested automation tweaks and more

The biggest change is the addition of pre-defined voice assistant actions in the automation editor. Instead of typing out custom commands every time, you can now pick from a list of common actions and add them to your automations with just a tap.

These actions live under the Devices action type and work on compatible devices. Here’s the full list of new pre-defined actions:

• Announce the current time
• Announce today’s weather
• Ask what time to set an alarm
• Play a chime
• Play music
• Play news
• Play a podcast
• Play radio
• Play sleep sounds
• Tell a joke

Google notes that these actions are only available in the Google Home app’s automation editor for now. They don’t yet work with Ask Home or Help me create.

You can finally delete pre-made routines

Google notes this is a change users have been requesting for a long time. Until now, Google’s built-in routines like Good morning and Bedtime couldn’t be deleted, even if you never used them.

With this update, you can now delete pre-made routines, making more space for custom automations you’ve actually created. Google says this should help reduce clutter in the automations list.

Easier way to send automation feedback

Moreover, Google is also improving how you report problems with automations. You can now tap and hold an automation to open a new feedback menu and choose what went wrong with it. This makes it quicker to report issues as and when they happen instead of having to dig through menus.

Better video clip downloads on Google Home for web

Finally, there’s a smaller but important fix for Google Home on the web. Google now supports continuous video clip downloads of up to five minutes.

This means longer camera clips won’t break into awkward chunks anymore, even if they’re made up of multiple short events.