Thanks to routines, you can automate some tasks of the Google Assistant and smart speakers of the Mountain View company. Here's how to do it
Google Assistant, or Google Assistant if you prefer to call it in English, is Big G's digital assistant based on artificial intelligence and a direct competitor to Amazon Alexa. Like the latter, Google Assistant can also be used to control smart speakers (mainly the Google Home, but not only) and smart home devices. And, thanks to the so-called routines, it can be finely customized by setting routines.
Routines are nothing but several tasks performed one after the other, triggered with a single command or at a certain time. The Google Assistant already has preset routines for the classic tasks it should perform during the day, which you can modify as you like. Creating new Google Assistant routines is very simple and lets you take full advantage of this technology. At the base of everything, however, there's always the Google Home app that you'll have to download (if it's not already installed by default on your smartphone) to enter the world of Assistant.
The preset routines of Google Assistant
After downloading Google Home and logging in with your Google account, you can start customizing the way the assistant responds to your commands. To create a new routine you have to tap on Settings > Assistant > Routine. Here you'll find 6 preset routines: "Good morning," "Good night," "Leaving home," "At home," "Daily commute to work," and "Daily commute home." These routines basically encapsulate the various commands to be executed at the classic moments of the day: when you wake up or go to sleep, when you are at home and want to relax, when you leave the house and when you come and go from work. As mentioned, to activate the routines you just need a single voice command, unless they are "timed": in this case they will start by themselves at a certain time.
How to create a new routine with Google Assistant
To the preset routines of Google Assistant you can add as many as you want. To do this, from the same tab as before, you have to tap on the "+" icon. In the tab that opens you'll find three fields to set: "When...", "My assistant should..." and "And then put...". Basically, you have to tell it when to do something (at a certain time or when you say a certain command), what it should do and, finally, what multimedia content it should play after finishing the command.
How to customize a preset routine
All six of Google Assistant's standard routines can be customized. To do so, you have to tap on one of them and the tab will open that summarizes the "When..." and "My assistant should..." of that specific routine. For example, in the "Good morning" routine, you can change the voice command "good morning" to "good day", "hello Google" or any other word or phrase you prefer. Similarly, you can also change the set of tasks that Google Assistant has to perform as soon as it hears the set command.