Google has updated one of the biggest missing features for Google Home since its launch – audio streaming via Bluetooth. The feature was announced in May this year, but the update has only now been pushed to Google Home devices.
The new feature enables Google Home owners to stream local music, podcasts and content from streaming services which are not supported by Home, to their speakers. While this mostly comes as good news, a few may not welcome it due to lag over a Bluetooth connection, and the matter has been discussed in many forums by Google Home owners. The feature can be activated by navigating to Settings in the Home app, and pairing your device to the Home smart speaker.
Google Home now has a handful of services like Spotify’s free tier, Netflix, Deezer and SoundCloud, while Hulu and HBO can be used for casting video to a smart TV using a Chromecast dongle. The Bluetooth feature addition to Google Home should increase the number of compatible devices that will work with Home for music streaming.
Google Home users can simply use the wake words to ask Google Assistant to play from their favorite playlists, and the addition of SoundCloud and Deezer opens up the music streaming experience beyond Spotify and Google Play Music.
Google announced that it was working on enabling Bluetooth audio support at I/O earlier this year. Now, Google has started to roll out the feature silently, without any announcement. The rollout will be complete over the next few days, so don’t worry if you haven’t got your update yet.
With this new addition, the Google Home smart speaker will become more of a centralized media controller. It is already shaping up to be far superior to Amazon Echo and its descendants from the AI point of view, and the Bluetooth audio feature should widen the gap even further on the capability front.
Thanks for visiting. Please support 1redDrop on social media: Facebook | Twitter
