My favorite Google Home trick and how to find it – Digital Market News

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Say, “Hey, Google, good morning,” to your Google Home ($100 at Best Buy) smart speaker and it will spring in to action. The built-in Google Assistant will greet you, tell the full time, forecast the day’s weather, remind you about your appointments and report the headlines. Thanks to a feature called routines, Google is able to bring most of these responses together under one command. 
Routines help Google Assistant respond just like a well-trained human assistant. With one command, you can flip on your smart lights, play music, turn your connected thermostat up or down and more. While preprogrammed options just like the “good morning” routine can be great, you can also create custom commands and responses uniquely tailored to you.
To make use of routines, you need the Google Home app and a device with Google Assistant. The app is available for iOS and Android. Google Assistant is made in to modern Android phones. Routines also work with smart speakers just like the original Google Home or the newer Nest Mini ($50 at Best Buy), smart displays like the Nest Hub ($90 at Best Buy), or even tablets or iPhones ($699 at Apple) in the event that you download Google Assistant. 
Routines works on your smart display. 
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Open the app, sign in with a Google account and you will see a Routines button at the very top. Tap it to begin to see the list of preset options. Tap one and it will spring in to action. These are great options to get yourself a sense for what routines can do. Hit Manage routines at the bottom to start customizing. You’ll note that same set of presets in this menu as well. Here, you can customize each of those presets to your liking, or you can begin your own from scratch. 
I’m going to walk through your options for a custom routine, but all those are present for the presets as well. To make your own personal, hit Add a routine. Here, you will see fields for a command, a day and time, Assistant actions and media. For the command, enter whatever phrase you want to use to trigger all the actions that follow. 
Maybe you want a routine when you’re ready to workout, which means that your command could possibly be, “It’s workout time.” You can add alternate phrasing in this menu as well. Note that Google Assistant does not respond well to questions — it searches for the solution itself rather than realizing you’re triggering a routine. For the best results, keep your commands to statements and phrases. 
The second field lets you set a day and time in order to schedule your routine to trigger automatically. Your smart home can perform the work without any input from you. 
In another section, you will need to tell Google Assistant what you want it to do. Your options are pretty wide and include almost anything Google Assistant can do if you should be giving individual commands. I’ve trouble with unlimited options, so I always hit Add action, then move to the Browse popular actions tab to get some ideas. Check whatever boxes you would like to trigger your smart home, get info and more.
Scroll completely to the underside to see Custom responses. Click the checkbox by Say something and hit the gear icon to complete what you want Google Assistant to say. If you would like Google Assistant to provide backup if you are telling bull crap or asking your kids to go to bed, it can do that. Check out the video above to see custom responses doing his thing.
Get Google Assistant set, and you can have your routine end with music, news or podcasts with the addition of media. You can arrange the order of any option you select. 
Thanks to routines, you can get more out of your Nest Mini by making Google Assistant your customized, personal assistant. Here is a listing of our favorite devices with Google Assistant built-in, and here are more tips to get the most out of your smart speaker.

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