So I’m going to take a punt and assume most of us have some kind of Google device in the home. The Mini’s are especially popular right now as a value add products with purchases.

We have the whole family, including mini’s, home, home hub and max! As well as Google Pixel, so I feel we know a little about what they can do 😉

We all know they are great little speakers, you can cast music from many sources like Spotify, Google Play Music and even YouTube. You can ask the weather and ask it questions!

But what else can you use them for?

Well, I’ve shared 11 cool things you might not know Google can do that we use it for daily!

Set Multiple Timers

When you are cooking this is amazingly helpful. You can set multiple timers, all individually named. For example, “Potatoes”, “Meat”, and “Vegetables”.

They will all run concurrently and not cancel each other out!

Add Events To Your Calendar

“Okay, Google. Add Date Night to my calendar on May 24th at 7 pm”.

By adding an event, Google will pop that straight into your Google Calendar, which will sync to you phone and everywhere else.

It’s great if you don’t have your phone, computer or diary handy to add the event when you remember!

Control Your TV

“Okay Google, play Paw Patrol on Stan on Living Room TV”

Genius, right? Especially handy when the kids are up before you or your busy with your handful in the kitchen and cannot find the remote!

Just make sure you have a Chromecast enabled TV or have a Chromecast connected to your tv. Then connect your Stan and Netflix accounts via your Google Home app.

Use It As A Photo Frame

This is one of my favourite features on the Google Home Hub. You can connect albums or select photos with certain individuals to rotate on your Google Home Hub screen.

It’s a great way to showcase your photos and I love seeing photos I’d completely forgotten about in my phone!

Create A Shopping List

“Okay Google, Add milk to my shopping list.”

Nothing worse than realising you are out of something and forget to write it down.

You can access your list in the Google Home app and via the web address!

Change The Temperature

“Okay Google, change the temperature to 18 degrees”.

If you have a smart home device attached to your cooling and heating unit then you can easily control the temperature of your home.

We have a Nest Learning Thermostat, which learns what temperature you like and builds a schedule around yours. It makes it extremely energy efficient as you’re not using power when you don’t need to.

It will turn off itself if it senses we are not home (no phones in the house). You can also program commands like “bedtime” which will set it to a particular heat.

Turn On/Off Your Lights

“Okay Google, turn on the kitchen lights”.

We recently put the Phillips Hue system in the renovated part of our house. And now I have no idea what I did without it. Especially our shed and study, as they are separate to the house so if I leave the lights on out there, I don’t have to go back into the cold to turn them off 😉

It’s great as well if you want to turn your lights on if you’re not at home. Or turn them off if you forgot.

Yes, that is correct – you can control your lights when you are not at home. And yes, Jezz has turned them on and off on me when he’s at work lol.

We have the house zoned and have named sequences like “Kitchen” which has three lights grouped to it. “Dining Room” and “Whole House” turns everything on and off!

Great little power saver too as you can set it up to just sense no one is home and turn off!!

Adjust Volume

“Okay Google, set volume to 4”

If you turn on the TV or start playing music and it’s too loud, then just say change the volume by numbers!

You will get an idea pretty quick what volume you like.

Make a Group

You can group your speakers together and create “zones” within your app and cast to those groups. We have “whole house” which means we can cast to all 8 speakers we have through the house at once. Great for dance party 😉

Broadcast Messages

“Okay Google, broadcast to home ‘Remember to take the chicken out'”

I really like this feature. If you are in another room, or even out and about and cannot get onto the person at home you can broadcast a message.

This will then play on all the speakers in our house. Pretty nifty right?

Create A Routine

“Okay Google, I’m going to bed”

Routines are great! You can set up several comrades on the one routine. Or bedtime routine turns our thermostat down to 16 and turns off all the lights!

What other cool things do you use your Google Home & speakers for??