Jordan O'BrienGoogle Home users will soon find themselves saying the ‘OK Google’ wake word a lot less. That’s because Google is officially rolling out the ‘Continued Conversation’ feature that it announced earlier this year at its developers conference.
Continued Conversation allows users to continue asking the Google Assistant questions without having to follow-up with the ‘OK Google’ wake word after every answer. That means users can ask for both the time and the weather in two separate questions, with only one ‘OK Google’ required.
The new Continued Conversation feature is available for all Google Home devices, including the Google Home, Home Mini, and Home Max. Users should begin to start receiving the update from today, and is ideal for those who want to get the most out of their smart speaker without sounding like a broken record.
Unfortunately, there are a few caveats with this new feature. While it is available from today, that only applies to those in the US. There’s no word on when there will be a wider release for the UK and other nations. Secondly, the follow-up question will need to be asked within eight seconds as that’s how long the microphone will stay active for, according to Google.
Google doesn’t want to automatically start listening to everyone’s conversations, which is why the Continued Conversation feature will need to be activated manually. This can be done using the Google Assistant app.