Google hasn’t officially announced this yet, but it has added the ability to schedule custom routines for its Google Home speakers.

Thanks to Android Police for the tip. Here’s the short version on how this works.

To make a custom routine, open the Google Home app on Android or iOS and navigate to Settings > Routines (under Services) and then select the “+” (New routine) button in the lower-right corner of the display.

To make the new routine scheduled, select “Set a time and day (optional)” from the New routine screen that appears. As you can see, the resulting Set a time and day screen has some nice options for determining when this routine will fire. And you can select which Google Home speaker will be used, and whether you will be notified on your phone.

After that, routine creation continues as before. You can add one or more actions—each of which can be any viable Google Assistant command, like “what’s the weather”—and then play music, news, radio, podcasts, or other media. In a typical example, you may wish for an alarm to go off at a certain time each time, with the Google Home speaker telling you the day’s weather and news and then playing a particular podcast, perhaps.

I can’t really test this because I’m on the road, and I’m pretty sure the people who are staying in my home wouldn’t be too excited if one of the Google Home speakers starting talking or playing music. So I guess I’ll have to wait until we’re home again to test this fully.

Tagged with Google Assistant, Google Home, routine