Scheduled Routines finally arrive for Google Home, but with usual caveats

• Scheduled Routines are now here for Google Home, nearly three months after Google’s announcement.
• As per usual with Google, scheduled Routines have a few limitations for now.
• Although not perfect, scheduled Routines will certainly make your smart home even smarter.

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At Google I/O 2018 — which was back at the beginning of May — Google promised two things that would come soon to Google Home: custom Routines and the ability to schedule Routines. We got custom Routines pretty soon after the announcement but scheduled Routines were still M.I.A.

But today, we finally are seeing scheduled Routines in the Google Home app. However, as with most Google product launches and updates, there are some significant caveats here.

The most significant caveat is that the ability to schedule Routines appears to be limited to United States/English-speaking users. This could change soon, but YMMV with other locations and languages.

Another caveat is that you currently can’t schedule the original six, ready-made Routines. Those are the ones Google announced with the launch of the Routines service: Good Morning, Bedtime, Leaving Home, I’m Home, Commuting to Work, and Commuting Home. Once again, this might change in the near future, but for now, it’s a no-go.

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Of course, to circumvent this limitation, you could simply recreate your ready-made Routines, give them a new hotword (“Hey Google, I’m in da crib” is a good one), and then add a schedule. But it might be worth waiting for Google to allow you to schedule the ready-made routines, if that seems silly to you.

Finally, you can’t schedule multiple times on different days within the same routine. For example, you can’t set a weather report to go off when you wake up at 8:00 A.M. on weekdays and then go off at noon when you wake up on weekends (don’t lie, you know it’s true). This could also change in the future.

To schedule a Routine, head to Google Home > Menu > More Settings > Routines and either edit an existing custom Routine or start a new one. You should see a new option to add a schedule. Check the screenshots below for an example.

Are you excited about scheduled Routines? Let us know in the comments what you plan to schedule!

NEXT: Google testing Material Design for Google Home app

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