Presence sensing routines rolling out for Google Home
One of the things I adored about Tasker was the ability to do different things based on where I was. A bit of this ability is coming shortly to Google Assistant / Home in the form of routines that activate based on being home or away. While that’s only a couple of options, and they’re geared for home, this is remarkably useful for those who want to automate further.
As with all things google these days, you either have presence sensing in your Home app at the moment, or you will in the next few days and no amount of getting newer copies of the Home App will help one bit. If you have it, the instructions are here for how to use it. If you don’t have it, just start planning.
The cool thing about the Home routines and presence sensing is it won’t go into effect just because one person in the family leaves the house. Last person to leave theoretically activates the away routine as long as everyone in the house has cell phones and is location sharing for that, so hopefully no turning off the lights on everyone the instant your phone realizes it’s not at home any more.
The presence sensing routines should consist of whatever you can ask a Google Home / Nest to do. If you’re familiar with routines already, it’s just a couple of automatic location based routines. Can’t wait? Too bad. You’ll just have to make some routines that are voice activated in the meantime until your Home app gets its act together.
[Android Police | 9to5Google]
