For a long, Wear OS-based smartwatch users have been asking for the Google Home app to control their connected smart home devices.
And as Google promised, it rolled out the app on Play Store for Android users – available for the Wear OS 3 and above smartwatches. Though it’s still bare bones, it has the needed controls set in to manage your smart home devices remotely via your smartwatch.
Google Home app for Smartwatches
Google has been heavily focusing on its Home app lately, with many new features added to make it more useful. We’ve seen the support for presence detection with interactions from Nest Devices added recently. And now, the company has rolled out a dedicated version of the Google Home app for Wear OS devices.
The company announced this in an I/O event earlier this year and now brought it on the occasion of Pixel Watch’s launch. As rolled out in the Google Play Store and available for devices running Wear OS 3 and above, the new Google Home app is currently a Public Preview release, so it may not support some devices.
FINALLY! The Google Home app for Wear OS is now available!
Sadly, it only works on Wear OS 3 and above. I tried sideloading it onto a Wear OS 2 watch, but it failed because it requires SDK version 30 and above (Android 11+). pic.twitter.com/gUUXp4ytko
— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) October 6, 2022
Also, it offers limited smart home controls at the moment, with more features in development. Currently, you can control all the rooms that had set up in the Google Home app on your phone and tap on the respective device to control it.
You get simple sliders and operate – on/off or adjust brightness for connected lights, manage the volume of connected speakers and other media devices, and the temperature of connected thermostats or smart AC units.
Though you can control all of these from the home screen of your smartwatch, you will be presented with a button to open the Google Home app on your phone for additional features. So still have to rely on your phone’s Google Home app for deeper controls. Well, we hope this is until Google adds support for more device controls in the future.
