Google is preparing a new version of its Home app, reshaped with Gemini at its center. The familiar structure has been simplified, with devices and favorites pressed into one Home tab, while settings now sit beneath the account switcher. A permanent box at the top invites the user to ask questions, check cameras, or command devices. It promises a sharper and more immediate link between voice and household control.
Yet beneath the novelty lies a silence. Important shortcomings remain untouched, long-requested refinements are still absent, and the strength of the app will be measured not in appearance, but in substance.
Smarter Customization: Why Flexible Tiles and Dashboards Matter
Home Assistant has earned its reputation in part through the freedom it grants users to shape their dashboards as they see fit. In contrast, Google Home’s display has remained unchanged, offering little beyond the rearrangement of favorites. The new design gives no sign of deeper control. What is absent is the ability to hide devices that serve no purpose in daily oversight. A motion sensor, for instance, may be useful in a routine, yet its constant presence on the list is needless. The omission is small in appearance, but it marks a larger failure to respect practical choice.
Device Layouts Need Smarter Control, Not Just Aesthetic Tweaks
The tiles in Google Home remain fixed in form, offering no freedom to adjust their size or content. A machine like the washer requires less space, while a speaker might deserve greater prominence when in use and less when idle. Even a small display of figures – such as the carbon level from an air monitor – would reduce needless tapping. Beyond this, the greater flaw is order itself. Devices and rooms march alphabetically, without regard for habit or urgency. To change this, one must rebuild the board from favorites, a needless burden that exposes the absence of true control and sensible design.
Simplifying Automation: Google Home Needs User-Friendly Routines
The code editor for routines offers precision, yet it demands a skill many have no wish to learn. To adjust the heat of a room or the pace of a fan should not require lines of script, for the system already knows the choices each device can offer. These controls ought to be present within the builder itself. Though the new tool has grown in strength, it remains narrow. Scenes, colors, and whole classes of machines are left outside its reach. The modes of the home are still blunt, and the logic of automation falls short of real intelligence.
Flexible Grouping for Real Homes
Modern homes rarely conform to the neat divisions of a plan, yet Google Home binds every device to rigid rooms. An open floor may serve as kitchen, dining space, and living area at once, but the system grants no freedom to shape groups as needed. A single thermostat may govern two offices, yet cannot be tied to both. The result is a structure that ignores reality. True order would allow lights, heaters, and machines to belong to several groups at once, reflecting how people live. It is a simple demand, but the absence of it reveals a striking neglect.
Expanding Compatibility: Why Google Must Open Up Camera Support
Google’s treatment of cameras stands apart from the rest of its smart home system. While thermostats, lights, and countless devices are supported through a clear standard, cameras remain fenced off, with preference given to Nest and a few chosen brands. Alternatives can be linked, but their performance is crippled: they load slowly, fail to display images, and send no useful alerts. The fault does not lie with the makers of these devices, but with the barriers imposed by the platform itself. A simple change – an open and equal standard) would restore choice – yet the walls remain, serving only Google’s own interests.
A Missed Opportunity for Simplicity
Scenes exist within Google Home, yet they remain hidden from sight. They cannot be viewed, browsed, or triggered by hand; they live only in the spoken command, carried out through Assistant or Gemini. In the builder of routines, their presence is uncertain, and in the new automation tool, absent altogether. The effect is wasteful. A scene, once created, should appear beside the devices it governs, saving the user from repeating orders. To hide it is to deny its purpose. A proper menu, with scenes clearly tied to each device, would restore both order and simplicity to the system.
Transparency First: Why Activity Logs Are Essential
In the modern home, devices act with a will of their own, yet the record of their actions is hidden. A light may shine, but whether by command or by sensor remains unknown. Air may be purified, or perhaps neglected, and still no trace is left behind. Google Home shows only fragments, guarding the rest as if they were of no consequence. But in the absence of history, control becomes illusion. Other systems offer clarity, though at the cost of labor and learning. Without change, the present path leads only to discontent, and the promise of automation remains unfulfilled.
Final Words
The new Home app by Google comes in shiny new AI attire, although it is wearing a tuxedo to a house that does not yet have doors. Certainly, Gemini integration is a great thing to talk about at dinner, but when your thermostat can no longer be a part of two rooms and your security camera slows down to dial-up speed the conversational AI is not as innovative as it is disruptive. Google has the resources, the ecosystem, and the user base to create something that is truly revolutionary. We are instead receiving another interface redesign where what is so badly needed is substance.
