Jordan O'BrienFollowing its US launch in April, multi-user support is now rolling out to Google Home users in the UK. That means those with multiple people in their household can enjoy personalised responses based on their calendar entries and their favourite music.
Multi-user support has been a popular addition to the Google Home, especially considering it’s the only device of its kind to offer automatic recognition of the user speaking to it. Amazon’s Echo supports multiple accounts in a household, although users need to physically tell it to ‘switch accounts’, which isn’t as elegant as Google’s solution.
How To Activate Multi-User Accounts
Activating multi-user accounts on Google Home is pretty easy, with users encouraged to download the Google Home app on their Android or iOS smartphone, if they don’t already have it. From there, users should be able to manage their Google Home device, whether that’s setting it up, discovering new functionality, or restarting the device.
To activate the multi-user accounts feature, users should see a card which says ‘multi-user is available’. Tapping this card on the screen should enable users to link their accounts with the device, with up to six accounts allowed to be linked at any one time.
To ensure that Google recognises which user is talking to it, the Google Home will ask each user to say phrases like ‘Hey, Google’ and ‘OK, Google’ a couple of times each. The Google Assistant will then store those phrases and match them to each user when they speak. This allows incredible levels of personalisation, something that was not previously possible.
In addition to setting up multi-user accounts, users will be able to set their specific preferences for how the Google Assistant reacts to certain commands. If one user prefers listening to music through Spotify, but the other prefers Google Play Music – then it’s possible to ensure that it launches the correct app for the right person.
Other US-Only Google Home Features
With the launch of multi-user account support in the UK, some Google Home owners will be hoping that other features that are exclusive to the US market will also make their way abroad sometime in the future.
One such feature that was announced in May, is the ability to call any mobile or landline in the US or Canada for free from Google Home. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like that feature is destined for the UK anytime soon, with it based on the old Google Voice service, which launched eight years ago in 2009 and has yet to make its way outside of North America.
Logitech Harmony control is yet another feature not currently available outside of the US, although users can get around this by changing the voice on the Google Assistant to English (US). Logitech has stated that functionality will be expanded outside of the US, although it has yet to give a firm date on when it will launch.