Google Assistant voice commands for your smart home work best if your devices are in groups (Google calls these groups “rooms”). Skipping this step during setup makes using your devices more difficult. Here’s how to create rooms and add devices to them.
Rooms make voice commands easy
With your smart devices paired with coins, Google will let you accomplish more with less words. Rather than telling it “turn off the living room light 1, turn off the living room light 2, turn off the living room light 3” and so on, you name the room Living room, then say “turn off the living room lights” to turn everything off turned off at once.
Even better, if the Google Home you’re talking to is physically in the same location as your smart lights, you can add it to the same group as the lights. Then all you have to say is “turn off the lights”. The Google Assistant will understand the association and turn off the appropriate lights.
How to add new devices to rooms
To add a device to a room, open the Google Assistant and tap the “Add” button.
Tap on the “Configure Device” option.
Tap “New device” for any Google Home or Chrome Cast device, or tap “Something already set up?” for external devices such as Philips Hue hub or Wink. For this example, we use the last option.
In the Manage Accounts dialog scroll to the service you want to add or tap the magnifying glass to type the name and search for it, for this example we’ll type Magic Home.
Tap the service, then provide account details. If this process seems to hang, try tapping the three dots in the upper-right corner and opening it in your browser instead.
Tap any device found, then tap the “Add to Room” option.
Tap the appropriate room name, then tap “Next.” If needed, scroll down, where you will see a “Custom Room” option which allows you to create a name.
You have finished. Your device will now be associated with a room.
How to add existing devices to rooms
Open the Google Assistant app and scroll down to find a list of devices that aren’t in rooms. Tap any device to add it to a room.
Tap “Add to Room” at the bottom of the screen.
Choose the appropriate home location. You will probably only have one house, so tap on it and then hit the “next” button.
Next, tap “Move device”.
If multiple accounts are associated with your “home” (for families, etc.), they will all have access to the device. If you ever move the device to a new home, all members will lose this access. Google tries to clarify this with the message “Affects access for members of the home”. This is something to keep in mind with a family setup.
Tap the room you want to pair the device to, then tap “Next.”
If you don’t see a room tag you like, scroll down for room choices. Tap the ‘Custom Room’ option, provide a label you like, then tap ‘Next’.
If you have a Google Home device, adding it to the same room will give you easier control of these lights. When a Google Home is paired to the same room as smart lights, you can say “Ok Google, turn on the lights” to turn them on. Of course, this only makes sense if the lights and Google Home are physically located in the same room.
Grouping your devices into rooms means you can control those rooms by referring to them. If you’ve grouped devices in a room labeled “bedroom,” you can say “Ok Google, turn off bedroom” or “turn off bedroom lights,” even when Google Home is located elsewhere in the house.
Grouping devices into rooms will not only make your Google Assistant app more organized, but will also make it easier to use those devices. If you have three lights in a room, it’s much easier to say “Turn off the living room” than having to tell him to turn off each light in turn.
