Gadgetory

so you just bought yourself a brand new Google home smart speaker let me show you how to make the most of your new purchase let's start with a refresher on the basics the Google home Google home mini and Google home Mac's are all what are called smart speakers that means they respond to your voice commands so yes they're technically always listening to you but they'll only actually record and respond to what you say after you get their attention using the wake words those are hey Google or okay Google if you don't feel like talking or there's a lot of background noise you can touch any of Google's smart speakers to perform some basic functions all of them have a physical mute button which turns off the microphone they each have physical volume controls you can play or pause music with a tap plus you can wake up the original Google home with a touch instead of the wake words still you'll need to use your voice for most of Google homes functions all the Google home speakers make use of a digital assistant plainly called Google assistant and it's more than just a pleasant voice it can actually be your personal DJ chances are you can just ask Google to play your favorite song and it'll agree and start playing if not you might need to subscribe to one of Google's compatible music services right now you can pick from Google Play Music YouTube music Spotify or Pandora you can select any of those services as your default so that when you search for a song Google will look there first your Google home also has Bluetooth built in so if the sound quality isn't up to snuff you can tell your Google home to play a song and it can then cast the song to another better speaker over Bluetooth you can even set that other speaker as your default for music playback so it'll automatically start playing songs there you can cast music to your TV too as Google home can also sync up with other devices through chromecast streamers if you don't know the name of the song you want to listen to you can actually search by lyrics and Google will help you out or if you're not looking for something specific you can just ask for a playlist of a type of music you can even create groups of speakers and have google play the same song and all of them at once to get your whole house party so Google homes pretty good for playing your music it's even better as a personalized using the Google home app you can train it to recognize up to six different voices then sync it with Google Calendar or Google Maps and you can ask it what's on your schedule what's traffic like on your way to work if someone else asks the same question they'll get a different tailored response better yet because it knows your voice you can use your Google home to shop and it'll verify your purchase simply by recognizing your voice you'll want to be careful with this functionality though we found we were able to fool it's voice recognition feature you can also use your Google home to ask for step by step recipe assistance you can make calls you can issue multiple commands at once you can even broadcast a message to other Google homes in your house so you can let the kids know it's time for dinner without needing to shout with a feature called routines you can customize your assistance even further say something like good morning or I'm leaving and you can have Google tell you about your commute play the news or even turn on the lights and lock the doors in fact you can use Google home to control quite a few different smart home gadgets both through routines and through direct commands right now Google works with thermostats smart lights smart switches smart locks even some cars sprinklers security systems and large appliances you obviously don't need to take advantage of everything your Google home can do but dive into an area that interests you and you'll find your new smart speaker can do a lot more than just tell jokes