You Can Now Let Trusted Friends and Family Control Your Google Home

Smart home controls mean you never have to manually flip a light switch again or get up to adjust the thermometer. In your home, where you know the routines and voice comments and, most importantly, have access to the home hub, they’re ideal. But for house-sitters or visiting family and friends who simply want the lights to come on or go off, they’re problematic. Previously, your choices were to grant full access in Google Home to anyone else you wanted to be able to control your smart home, or let them take their chances getting your voice assistant to respond. The problem is that once they had access, they could also do some damage, accidentally deleting smart devices or messing up settings. Last week, Google made the first moves to resolving this issue by testing user levels for Google Home. At this time, it is only available for some users enrolled in Google Public Preview, Google’s beta testing program. 

For now, there are only two user levels: Admin and Member. User levels are popular in software and services, so they likely aren’t a new concept to most. Each user level carries a hierarchy of permissions. In this case, Admins continue to have all the permissions that anyone with access previously did. They can add and remove devices, move them from room to room, rename them, etc. Admin is another way of saying “full access.” While I was unable to find any difference in permissions between “Admin” and “Owner,” I’d be surprised if there weren’t some. Usually there are some controls only Owners, being the person who installed the device or software, can affect.

Members have limited access. They can mostly operate the devices. While they can’t add a new robot vacuum, for example, they can run it. More interestingly, they can also change personal settings like face and voice recognition. You can offer your members two additional kinds of access.  “Activity” grants them the ability to see the history of activity on a device and “Settings” allows them some rudimentary access to change settings of a device and add automations. 

screenshot of permissions, courtesy of Google
Credit: Google

I have a smart home and routinely have dog- or house-sitters, and this solves a huge problem. As practice of basic security, I like that I can grant—and then revoke—access for members, giving them only as much access as they need, for only as long as they need it. I immediately granted my nextdoor neighbor access, since we often go into one another’s homes to water plants, put a package inside or feed a pet.  

Remember, you must be enrolled in Public Preview. Once you are, you can add a new admin or member by going into Google Home and then opening settings. Tap on the new “Household and access” menu, and tap the “+” in the upper right corner and add the email address of the person you’d like to invite. They’ll receive the invite via email, and will need to install the Google Home app, but they won’t need to be part of Public Preview themselves.