While you might want younger family members, overnight guests or flatmates to be able to access some smart home gadgets – like switching on lights, or changing colours – you probably don’t want those same people to be able to make changes to your heating schedule, or to be able to remotely disable any security cameras you have dotted around the house ready for when you’re away on holiday.
Thankfully, that looks set to change very soon.
Google appears to be changing its Google Home app to add tiers of different access levels. Heading to the Settings menu within the Google Home app, you’ll be able to find a list of everyone with access to your smart home gadgets under the Household heading. There’s an option to add a new person, which has been there for a good while, but what’s new is the ability to tap on an individual in the list and find out what access level they have to all of the devices in your home.
How to Use Guest Mode With Google Assistant
Kevin Parrish
Google Assistant-enabled smart speakers work best when they can provide personal information. However, you may not want everyone who enters your house to have access to your account. That’s where “Guest Mode” comes in. We’ll show you how it works.
What Is Google Assistant Guest Mode?
The idea behind “Guest Mode” is to turn your Nest Hub, Nest Mini, Google Home, or Google Assistant smart speaker into a public device. It turns off access to any personal results and doesn’t save queries to your account. It’s kind of like “Incognito Mode” in a web browser.
Guest Mode will prevent visitors from adding to your calendar, changing your appointments, launching a call to your contacts, and other actions. However, it will still allow your guests to turn on lights, listen to the radio, or set timers when cooking.
If you want to test out Guest Mode right now, just say Hey Google, turn on Guest Mode to your nearest smart speaker. The new functionality is available right now for those using Google Assistant in English - with support for other languages to follow, Google says.
However, the timing of the release of this new feature isn t ideal .as nobody should be inviting guests or family members around to their home anytime soon. That s because the UK, like vast swathes of mainland Europe and North America, is currently in the midst of lockdown measures to desperately try to combat the spread of the coronavirus. In the UK, having guests from outside of your household – unless you re in a support bubble for care reasons – is against the la
The RA5000 and RA3000 models are available in a black body with contrasting copper highlights, with the RA3000 also coming in a light grey fabric body with silver accents.
If you’re looking for a new speaker system to enhance your home entertainment system, Sony has just announced two new wireless home speaker systems with the SRS-RA5000 and the SRS-RA3000. It will bring “a premium, seamless listening experience” with the brand’s proprietary 360 Reality Audio and Immersive Audio Enhancement technologies. And while the speaker system […]