Google and Yale announced the Nest x Yale smart door lock back in 2017, with the smart features of the lock controlled through the Nest app. However, the company sunset the Nest app in favor of the Google Home app in 2021. Despite “transitioning” to the Google Home app, Google never really managed to get full feature parity with the Nest app. An upcoming Google Home app update could help bridge some of the gaps, finally giving Nest x Yale smart door lock users the ability to use passcodes through it.

In the latest Google Home app v3.19.1.3 update, we found the following strings that reference passcode functionality:

<string name="choose_a_lock_header_description">A guest passcode will be created for this lock</string>
<string name="create_label_header_description">Labels help you identify and organize passcodes</string>
<string name="choose_a_lock_header_title">Choose lock</string>
<string name="create_passcode_label_hint">Passcode label</string>
<string name="edit_label_header_description">Tap label to change. Labels help you identify and organize passcodes.</string>
<string name="create_label_header_text">Create label</string>

The strings reveal that the Google Home app will get passcode-related features. These features will extend to labeling and creating guest passcodes, though there is always room for adding more features in the future.

Now, the strings do not directly reference the Nest x Yale locks. So, there is a chance that Google is building functionality for some future hardware products. However, there’s also a chance that this feature is finally an attempt at bringing feature parity to Nest x Yale lock users, and we believe that to be more likely the case.

Google’s support documentation on Nest x Yale Lock passcodes continues to reference the Nest app for creating and changing the passcodes used to lock and unlock the Google Nest x Yale Lock. We’ve also spotted exasperated Nest x Yale lock users on Reddit trying to figure out how to manage passcodes for their lock in the confused mishmash between the Nest app and the Google Home app. The Nest app redirects them to the Google Home app, but the Google Home app seems to lack functionality around passcodes. So it’s likely that Google could be looking to finally bridge the gap here for existing users. However, this remains speculation on our end.

We’ve reached out to Google for a statement on this finding. We’ll update this article when we hear back from them.

My household has far too many Google products in it, among them several Home Hub, Nest, and original Home speakers. There are very few commands we actually use on a regular basis but turning off a light near the bed, setting the temperature, and turning on an array of lights to make my basement look less like a death trap are things we use all the time.

For the past few months a rather regular event has been my wife attempting to turn off a device, being greeted by a male voice saying that the TP-Link Kasa service is unreachable and to try again later. No matter how many times she asks once it’s told her it’s down Google Assistant will have the male voice, and all her requests will somehow not work.

Now, I know the voice options for Assistant, it’s one of the male voices… but none of us have chosen one of the male voices. Both her and my Google Assistant voices are stock and neither of the kids have chosen that voice. Once the man’s voice is heard, nothing works for her. I ask Assistant to turn out the light and bam.

It’s become a running joke that it just hates her. The later it is in the night the less chance she has of it turning off the light she’s reading by.

Light is wired in such a way that to turn it off manually you need to crawl under a desk six feet away, using voice commands is preferable.

We’ve never been able to narrow down anything other than that it’s on one of the original Google Homes, and it’s usually after 11pm. Works fine any other times. If I’m not mistaken the volume is also slightly louder, although that might just be the voice.

Google Assistant/Home: A strange man’s voice answers by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

Google has announced seven new useful features coming or here for your devices today. It’s more like 4 features, but whatever.

Control devices from your home screen

The feature I find the promise of the neatest, although it unfortunately is not available on my Pixel 8 Pro as of this writing, is the ability to use your favorite devices in Google Home straight from a widget on your home screen. If you’re like me you have a bunch of devices but generally only need to control a few of them not by voice. A quiet time widget would do wonders for me for when I don’t want to wake someone by yelling “set temperature to 68 degrees”.

The post on the Google Blog indicates it’s here, my phone says it’s not. Probably will be here later as they seem to love to get to me last. I am very much looking forward to this particular widget. It’s been on my wishlist for a while now.

They also are rolling out the same ability it appears to Wear OS watches, and I could have sworn I did this already on a watch in the past.

Edit your messages after they’re sent

RCS messages can now be edited. During a brief window of time (15 minutes) you can tap and change the text.

This I assume will lead to kids pulling the rug out from under people in text threads by asking a simple yes/no question and then editing it, taking a screenshot, and otherwise doing what kids used to do on Facebook to make it look like everyone was supporting a hate group…

Will have to fire up an RCS thread at some point… my text message threads are so old even the RCS capable people are showing plain text.

Effortless hotspot sharing

Looks like they’re adding NFC relayed hotspot sharing so you don’t have to type in a password, just tap your hotspot phone to the device you want to share it to. Useful, but sharing hotspots has not generally been a difficult thing.

The feature was so meh, that’s interesting that they combined it with the announcement block of being able to switch Google Meet devices mid-meeting, which I guess also shows how well Google Meet must be doing at the moment.

Other stuff

More digital wallet payment options on watches (appears Paypal is an option in the US or Germany.)

More digital car key support.

[Google Blog or Explore What’s New]

Google adds some useful Android features today by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

It’s Saturday Night, for reasons unknow I’m sleepier than normal and decide to go to bed early. At 11:13 I hear two very close and very loud gunshots… my wife asks me if that was the cat and I tell her I doubt he’s learned to fire a 9mm, let along in such rapid succession.

Being the action hero that I am I check the camera and rewind just to verify that I did in fact hear gunfire and not that guy with the supposedly specially tuned car.. I say specially tuned because he shows up on neighborhood forums anytime someone calls it a gunshot muffler. Nope, it’s not him and I am about to call police when I hear the police.

With my street swarmed by police I wander out to offer the audio of my cameras. The shooter did not go by my house and I don’t have cameras aimed up the road, although I suspect I should at this point.

In the Google Home app I view the clip, attempt to download it so I can email it so they have the bang bang click (third shot jammed,) and no. I got nothing but “download failed” and an option to retry. I’ll save the next 20 minutes of attempting to download any clip from any Home-controlled camera using the Home app and skip to that I remembered one of my cameras is one of the old Nest cameras and can be accessed via the Nest App, which while it’s the same company, the Nest app actually works and isn’t a half assembled attempt at moving a working app into Google’s One App Solution.

I get the audio from the old nest app, create a clip, share it to YouTube and forward it to the police.

Completely failed by the Google Home implementation again.

A new Google Nest Camera fail over the weekend by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

My household has far too many Google products in it, among them several Home Hub, Nest, and original Home speakers. There are very few commands we actually use on a regular basis but turning off a light near the bed, setting the temperature, and turning on an array of lights to make my basement look less like a death trap are things we use all the time.

For the past few months a rather regular event has been my wife attempting to turn off a device, being greeted by a male voice saying that the TP-Link Kasa service is unreachable and to try again later. No matter how many times she asks once it’s told her it’s down Google Assistant will have the male voice, and all her requests will somehow not work.

Now, I know the voice options for Assistant, it’s one of the male voices… but none of us have chosen one of the male voices. Both her and my Google Assistant voices are stock and neither of the kids have chosen that voice. Once the man’s voice is heard, nothing works for her. I ask Assistant to turn out the light and bam.

It’s become a running joke that it just hates her. The later it is in the night the less chance she has of it turning off the light she’s reading by.

Light is wired in such a way that to turn it off manually you need to crawl under a desk six feet away, using voice commands is preferable.

We’ve never been able to narrow down anything other than that it’s on one of the original Google Homes, and it’s usually after 11pm. Works fine any other times. If I’m not mistaken the volume is also slightly louder, although that might just be the voice.

Google Assistant/Home: A strange man’s voice answers by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

Google has announced seven new useful features coming or here for your devices today. It’s more like 4 features, but whatever.

Control devices from your home screen

The feature I find the promise of the neatest, although it unfortunately is not available on my Pixel 8 Pro as of this writing, is the ability to use your favorite devices in Google Home straight from a widget on your home screen. If you’re like me you have a bunch of devices but generally only need to control a few of them not by voice. A quiet time widget would do wonders for me for when I don’t want to wake someone by yelling “set temperature to 68 degrees”.

The post on the Google Blog indicates it’s here, my phone says it’s not. Probably will be here later as they seem to love to get to me last. I am very much looking forward to this particular widget. It’s been on my wishlist for a while now.

They also are rolling out the same ability it appears to Wear OS watches, and I could have sworn I did this already on a watch in the past.

Edit your messages after they’re sent

RCS messages can now be edited. During a brief window of time (15 minutes) you can tap and change the text.

This I assume will lead to kids pulling the rug out from under people in text threads by asking a simple yes/no question and then editing it, taking a screenshot, and otherwise doing what kids used to do on Facebook to make it look like everyone was supporting a hate group…

Will have to fire up an RCS thread at some point… my text message threads are so old even the RCS capable people are showing plain text.

Effortless hotspot sharing

Looks like they’re adding NFC relayed hotspot sharing so you don’t have to type in a password, just tap your hotspot phone to the device you want to share it to. Useful, but sharing hotspots has not generally been a difficult thing.

The feature was so meh, that’s interesting that they combined it with the announcement block of being able to switch Google Meet devices mid-meeting, which I guess also shows how well Google Meet must be doing at the moment.

Other stuff

More digital wallet payment options on watches (appears Paypal is an option in the US or Germany.)

More digital car key support.

[Google Blog or Explore What’s New]

Google adds some useful Android features today by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

It’s Saturday Night, for reasons unknow I’m sleepier than normal and decide to go to bed early. At 11:13 I hear two very close and very loud gunshots… my wife asks me if that was the cat and I tell her I doubt he’s learned to fire a 9mm, let along in such rapid succession.

Being the action hero that I am I check the camera and rewind just to verify that I did in fact hear gunfire and not that guy with the supposedly specially tuned car.. I say specially tuned because he shows up on neighborhood forums anytime someone calls it a gunshot muffler. Nope, it’s not him and I am about to call police when I hear the police.

With my street swarmed by police I wander out to offer the audio of my cameras. The shooter did not go by my house and I don’t have cameras aimed up the road, although I suspect I should at this point.

In the Google Home app I view the clip, attempt to download it so I can email it so they have the bang bang click (third shot jammed,) and no. I got nothing but “download failed” and an option to retry. I’ll save the next 20 minutes of attempting to download any clip from any Home-controlled camera using the Home app and skip to that I remembered one of my cameras is one of the old Nest cameras and can be accessed via the Nest App, which while it’s the same company, the Nest app actually works and isn’t a half assembled attempt at moving a working app into Google’s One App Solution.

I get the audio from the old nest app, create a clip, share it to YouTube and forward it to the police.

Completely failed by the Google Home implementation again.

A new Google Nest Camera fail over the weekend by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

As part of the May 2024 Android Feature Drop, Google is officially rolling out some much-awaited features for Google Home users. Those who have built their smart home centered around Google Home will now have more ways to control their favorite or most accessed smart home devices.

Android users can now add a Google Home widget to their home screen, featuring their favorite smart home device controls. This is incredibly useful, especially if you have devices that you constantly toggle or access throughout the day. The widget is also surprisingly flexible, letting you resize to your desired configuration to suit your home screen.

Google has reinstated a popular feature in the Google Home app: the ability to adjust the volume of multiple speakers simultaneously. This functionality, which Google had to remove in the wake of a legal dispute with Sonos, is now back, surely to the relief of many users.

The original removal stemmed from a lawsuit filed by Sonos, accusing Google of infringing on various technological patents. Sonos claimed that Google’s entire Nest and Chromecast product lines were utilizing proprietary Sonos technology, including features like phone-based music streaming control, speaker group management, and automatic equalization.

For the past few years, users had to adjust the volume for each speaker individually. However, with the reinstatement of multi-speaker volume control, it seems Google has found a way to address Sonos’s concerns while restoring a much-loved feature for its users.

To use the restored feature on an Android device, users should follow these steps:

• Open the Google Home app.
• Start a playback session.
• Tap on the mini-player.
• Access the output selector to add or remove speakers or choose from preset speaker groups.
• Adjust the volume for the selected devices collectively.

Additionally, users can now use Google Assistant voice commands to manage group volumes. Commands such as “Hey Google, turn it up” (which increases the volume by 10%) or “Hey Google, set volume to X%” will seamlessly adjust the audio output across all connected devices.

Google has also hinted at further enhancements to group volume control, with plans to integrate it directly into Android smartphone lock screens and smart displays like the Nest Hub.

Google has announced seven new useful features coming or here for your devices today. It’s more like 4 features, but whatever.

Control devices from your home screen

The feature I find the promise of the neatest, although it unfortunately is not available on my Pixel 8 Pro as of this writing, is the ability to use your favorite devices in Google Home straight from a widget on your home screen. If you’re like me you have a bunch of devices but generally only need to control a few of them not by voice. A quiet time widget would do wonders for me for when I don’t want to wake someone by yelling “set temperature to 68 degrees”.

The post on the Google Blog indicates it’s here, my phone says it’s not. Probably will be here later as they seem to love to get to me last. I am very much looking forward to this particular widget. It’s been on my wishlist for a while now.

They also are rolling out the same ability it appears to Wear OS watches, and I could have sworn I did this already on a watch in the past.

Edit your messages after they’re sent

RCS messages can now be edited. During a brief window of time (15 minutes) you can tap and change the text.

This I assume will lead to kids pulling the rug out from under people in text threads by asking a simple yes/no question and then editing it, taking a screenshot, and otherwise doing what kids used to do on Facebook to make it look like everyone was supporting a hate group…

Will have to fire up an RCS thread at some point… my text message threads are so old even the RCS capable people are showing plain text.

Effortless hotspot sharing

Looks like they’re adding NFC relayed hotspot sharing so you don’t have to type in a password, just tap your hotspot phone to the device you want to share it to. Useful, but sharing hotspots has not generally been a difficult thing.

The feature was so meh, that’s interesting that they combined it with the announcement block of being able to switch Google Meet devices mid-meeting, which I guess also shows how well Google Meet must be doing at the moment.

Other stuff

More digital wallet payment options on watches (appears Paypal is an option in the US or Germany.)

More digital car key support.

[Google Blog or Explore What’s New]

Google adds some useful Android features today by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

It’s Saturday Night, for reasons unknow I’m sleepier than normal and decide to go to bed early. At 11:13 I hear two very close and very loud gunshots… my wife asks me if that was the cat and I tell her I doubt he’s learned to fire a 9mm, let along in such rapid succession.

Being the action hero that I am I check the camera and rewind just to verify that I did in fact hear gunfire and not that guy with the supposedly specially tuned car.. I say specially tuned because he shows up on neighborhood forums anytime someone calls it a gunshot muffler. Nope, it’s not him and I am about to call police when I hear the police.

With my street swarmed by police I wander out to offer the audio of my cameras. The shooter did not go by my house and I don’t have cameras aimed up the road, although I suspect I should at this point.

In the Google Home app I view the clip, attempt to download it so I can email it so they have the bang bang click (third shot jammed,) and no. I got nothing but “download failed” and an option to retry. I’ll save the next 20 minutes of attempting to download any clip from any Home-controlled camera using the Home app and skip to that I remembered one of my cameras is one of the old Nest cameras and can be accessed via the Nest App, which while it’s the same company, the Nest app actually works and isn’t a half assembled attempt at moving a working app into Google’s One App Solution.

I get the audio from the old nest app, create a clip, share it to YouTube and forward it to the police.

Completely failed by the Google Home implementation again.

A new Google Nest Camera fail over the weekend by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

It has been a busy week with a ton of announcements, as expected for any Google I/O event. The company unveiled tons of new AI stuff, as well as news on Android 15, Wear OS 5, and more. If you were following the event closely, you may have even noticed a couple of things that seemed like sneakily quiet announcements, such as a potential widget for Google Home.

During the Build beautiful Android widgets with Jetpack Glance session, which is meant more for developers than consumers, Google discussed the importance of widgets. The company explained that great widgets are helpful, simple, adaptive, cohesive, and discoverable. However, it was a slide that showed up near the end of the session that was particularly interesting.

This week, Google is holding its I/O event where it has announced a plethora of AI features coming to its ecosystem. But the announcements haven’t been limited to just AI. Today, the company announced that you’ll be able to use your Google TV services as a smart home hub and that it is opening up its Google Home platform with the launch of Home APIs.

In a blog post, Google announced that it will be upgrading its hubs so that other devices can become smart home hubs for Google Home later this year. This includes Google TV services like Chromecast with Google TV and select panel TVs with Google TV running Android 14 or higher. Some LG TVs will be eligible as well.

This is thanks in part to the fact that Google is launching Home APIs, which allow apps and other experiences to access your smart home. This means that any app — whether it is a smart home app or not — can take advantage of Google Home’s automation engine by accessing the over 600 million devices the platform supports.

One such example Google provides is potentially giving a food delivery app the ability to access your porch lights. The app would be able to turn those lights on automatically when the delivery driver is nearby.

Home APIs will be used for a range of other functions as well. For example, smart home device maker Eve will use the API to bring its experience to Android for the first time, allowing users to do things like building automations for “lowering the blinds when the temperature drops at night.” Meanwhile, ADT will use Home API for features like “Trusted Neighbor,” which lets users grant temporary access to their homes to neighbors, friends, or helpers.

There is currently no date for when Google will roll these features out.

Leaks have been hinting toward Google working on a new Chromecast with Google TV device. And yet another reference was recently discovered in the latest Google Home app update.

The discovery was made by 9to5Google in an APK teardown of the Google Home app. The outlet noticed that Google added several new models to the internal list of Google Cast-compatible devices. Among them, three were labeled as JBL Authentics speakers that were released last year. However, one device, “YTD,” remained unknown and intriguing.