Google Assistant gets support for soundbars, streaming sticks

Google will be hosting its Hey Google Smart Home Summit, which is being hosted in lieu of the Google I/O 2020, on July 8. Ahead of the online event, the company has announced that Google Assistant will soon be able to control a whole bunch of new smart home devices.

The company back in April had announced its first batch of Smart Home Entertainment Device or SHED that would get Google Assistant support later this year. This list included devices such as set-top boxes, remotes, and AppSelector among other things. Now, Google has announced its second batch of SHED that would be getting support for Google Assistant.

Google, in its developer’s blog, announced that the second batch of SHED that would be getting Assistant support include audio-video receiver, streaming box, streaming stick, soundbar, streaming soundbar and speaker.

It is worth noting that while Google has announced the support for soundbars and streaming sticks, it doesn’t necessarily translate to these devices being supported by Google Assistant immediately. What it does is that it would encourage makers of these devices and their apps to develop actions that would in turn allow Google Assistant to control the corresponding devices using voice commands when the users enable the corresponding skills.

Apart from announcing the support for a bunch of new devices, Google has also rolled out a feature to Google Assistant that would enable users to use Google Assistant for viewing and selecting channels. For understanding, users will now be able to ask Google Assistant to switch between HBO and National Geographic channel simply by using voice commands.

“The available channels should be shared as a list, per user or device, during SYNC via the availableChannels attribute. This list should comprise of all top or popular channels that the user or device is subscribed to,” the company wrote in another post.

(Source 1, Source 2)