What you need to know
- Google's Assistant Routines will soon be able to be pinned to the home screen.
- You'll be able to activate a routine with a single tap once this is enabled.
- It's not especially wide-spread as it's being tested for a limited amount of users at the moment.
Google Assistant Routines are one of the more useful parts of the digital assistant. Rather than needing to verbally reel out a string of commands every time you wish to repeat a set of tasks you carry out on a daily basis — you can use one command to carry out multiple actions. It's a feature that's found a home on other assistants as well including Amazon's Alexa and Samsung's Bixby, but Google is making its own take on the concept easier to access.
As spotted by Droid Life, Google is testing an improvement to Routines where you can pin them to your home screen. Once this is done, you won't even have to speak to initiate a Routine. It'll be as simple as hitting the icon you now have pinned on your home screen. In essence, these shortcuts will act as buttons, and tapping them will tell Google Assistant to run the routine for you.
For instance, say you have a "Welcome Home" Routine. You can add that to your home-screen, and upon arriving home, just pull out your phone and tap the shortcut to carry out all associated actions.
Unfortunately, this isn't available everywhere. The Reddit thread cited by Droid Life only has three users who have spotted the change at the time of writing.
Have you found this new Routines feature on your phone? Let us know in the comments below.
