You can now set Google Assistant routines with less delay

Many people now have some form of speech assistant at home. Whether it’s the Google Home Mini (or Nest Home Mini), or just the Google Assistant in their Android smartphone. However, if you use the Home app, you can set up routines that, for example, automatically close your curtains and dim the lights when you say “Romantic evening”. Those routines are getting better now, because there will be less delay in the future.

No need for IFTTT anymore

Where in the past you often needed If This Then That to create a kind of chain reactions with the smarthome gadgets in your house, you need it less since Google gave the Assistant combined with Home the possibility to enable routines.

Last year, Google already made it possible to enable a small delay, so that you could, for example, let a certain gadget do its thing a minute after the rest. Google then allowed a delay of up to 1 minute, but now that is being pushed back. You can now use delays of up to 1 second, so that your routines can be applied even more specifically to your wishes. This does not apply to Google’s standard routines, but it does to routines that you create from scratch.

More delay in Routines

This delay is especially useful if, for example, you have the lights turned off when you leave the house, or if you switch on the alarm. Not that you’re just inside and all the alarms start to sound, or that you have to find the doorknob in the dark. If you think a minute is a bit long, you can now make it half a minute or even shorter if you want.

You do this via the ‘delay start action when setting up a routine. You can then select not only hours and minutes, but also seconds. You can set several such delays, something that is certainly a welcome addition to your smarthome now that it can also be shorter than a minute.

Are you still shy about handy routines? In our article about useful Google routines, we give a few tips.