What you need to know
- A new Assistant routine — workday routine — is coming to strengthen your work/life balance in the work from home age.
- It'll be made available today in English.
- Google is also rolling out Gentle Sleep and Wake to all smart lights in the next few days.
As we all work from home, it's easy to lose track of a home life balance when all we're doing is transitioning from one-screen to the other. To somewhat strengthen that balance, Google is adding a new workday routine to Assistant, built to provide small nudges that'll remind us to get up and go. It's built off of Google's Assistant routines feature-set, and Google will even set you up with a standard template that you can customize.
Writing in a blog today, Google's Alice Liang said:
After you enable the routine in settings on your Android or iOS device, you can start with a pre-set routine. For example, every Monday through Friday at 10:00 a.m., you'll get a message from Google Assistant on your smart speaker or display saying "it's time to stand up and stretch!" At 2:00 p.m., it might suggest going for a walk, and then to grab a glass of water at 3:00 p.m. Finally, at 4:45 p.m., you'll be reminded to start wrapping things up. Assistant will also regularly share the time with you throughout the day, so that you don't lose track of upcoming meetings.
Google is also rolling out its Gentle Sleep and Wake feature to all smart lights. Previously, it was exclusive to Phillips Hue light bulbs. With this feature, your lights will start to dim or brighten around 30 minutes before you're due to wake up or sleep to provide a gentle nudge. If you have an Android phone running Android 6.0 or above, Google's Bedtime feature provides similar functionality on mobile.
Workday routine is rolling out today in English while Gentle Sleep and Wake are coming over the next few days.
