Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- We’ve spotted a major redesign in the works for the Google Home, with Gemini at its center.
- The update will introduce “Gemini for Home,” replacing Google Assistant with an AI for more conversational interactions and advanced controls.
- The app’s layout is being simplified, with the “Favorites” tab renamed to “Home” and a new “Ask Home” search bar to access Gemini.
Google Home v3.41.50.3 includes code for a significant app redesign. We’ve managed to enable the redesigned Google Home experience to give you an early look ahead of its launch.
The intro screen for this upcoming update will introduce Gemini for Home. The star of the show is Gemini, of course, which is replacing Google Assistant on your smart home devices. You also get access to Gemini Live for natural, free-flowing conversations.
The intro screen further mentions that you can simply “Ask Home.” You can describe what you want to automate, or ask to search your video and home history. Users will also be able to see detailed AI event descriptions, notifications, and daily summaries.
The intro screen also mentions that the upcoming “Google Home Speaker” will offer 360 audio. Some of the features will require the upcoming “Google Home Premium” subscription.
Moving on to the redesign, the Favorites tab within the Google Home app has been renamed to “Home.”
Google has also removed the Devices and Settings tab. You can still access your devices by tapping on the grid icon in the Home tab for “All devices.” If you look closely at the UI present in the intro screen screenshots at the beginning of this article, you will notice that the Google Home app’s Home page also has icons for video and thermometer, likely related to the upcoming Nest devices.
Keen-eyed readers would have already spotted that the new UI has a cleaner header. The Settings, Inbox, and Lab icons (for Google Home Preview features) have been moved out of the header and into the account switcher page.
The Activity and Automations tabs have been reordered and come with new icons. They also get a slightly different look. There’s possibly a “Create” button present in the upcoming UI too, but we couldn’t see it yet, possibly due to some activation issues on our end.
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The UI for adding new devices through a QR code scan has also received some changes. You don’t get a full-screen preview anymore, but the smaller preview helps keep attention and focus on the scanner area.
If you’re wondering how Gemini comes into play in this new UI, it will be through the big search bar at the top, which includes hint text “Ask Home.” When users access Gemini within the Google Home app for the first time, they will have to accept new terms and conditions. Once they do so, they will get a new “Ask Home” conversation screen.
The Ask Home conversation screen isn’t currently functional for us, which is expected. Users will be able to thumbs up and down the responses to provide feedback. They will also be able to regenerate the response using the refresh button. There’s another refresh button at the top right, which starts a new conversation.
You can see all the upcoming changes to the Google Home app in this early hands-on video:
These changes are not yet live in the Google Home app. Given that Google has confirmed an announcement for October 1, you can expect the changes to be shown off and rolled out afterward.
⚠️ An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
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