Detecting your presence better in the home, the Google Home app now relies on interactions with your smart devices to perform the supposed tasks.
This is made possible with a new feature addition called “Presence Sensing”, which is optional in the Home app. When enabled, this will collect interactions with the connected smart devices to trigger the works of other devices.
Google Home Presence Sensing
Google’s got a bunch of smart home devices to make your life easier – but they all need to be communicating with each other – or with the controlling app (Google Home) to work properly.
And Google is perfectly streamlined this over the years. Now, it added a presence-sensing feature to its Google Home app, which uses the interactions made with Nest speakers and smart displays for automating tasks.
Improved presence sensing on Nest devices? Yes, please. ✨
Now, when you opt in to the feature, your Nest speakers and displays can better detect your presence via voice or touch and automate actions based on whether you're home or not.
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— Made By Google (@madebygoogle) September 23, 2022
Until today, the Home relies on connected smart devices like the Nest Guard, Nest Protect, Nest Thermostat, or Nest x Yale smart lock to detect your presence. This process also needs your phone’s location to be more accurate. Though it’s working fine, there are situations where you may still want your devices to work without this data.
For example, locking someone up in the home and leaving will be the devices numb – since the Nest smart lock observes you’re outside, making it harder for the people within the locked home. Thus, relying on the interactions from internal devices too is a good way to work.
So, if you enable the presence sensing in the Google Home app (in the Features section), the devices tend to work even with minimal interaction with the smart devices – like talking to your Nest Audio or a tap on your Nest Hub.