Google has just come off of its virtual "Hey Google" Smart Home Summit with a bouquet of goodies that will let developers make their appliances more useful and, in turn, help people do things around the house in a smarter way. Some of the changes are ones we've already reported on, but there are a few you probably aren't aware of that might just fit your bill.

What's arguably the biggest update for end users is one that we've seen in the Android 11 Beta — smart home controls in the power menu. You can take a closer look at what you can do in our article here, but the shorthand here is that you set which devices to control from this vantage point and make on/off or incremental toggles as well. Appliance makers don't need to do anything to make this work, which makes it all the more sweeter.

This shortcut may mean you'll be checking on your smart devices more often. That, in turn, means Assistant will be querying OEM servers to check on device states and then making commands more often. With that in mind, Google will be introducing new tools in the coming months for developers to test and debug the reliability of their devices' state reporting. At the same time, the company will also set a new reliability threshold at which point Assistant will default to using a more efficient, less taxing method of checking device states with the Report State feature. TL;DR, devices that can reliably report their current state will be able to take commands faster, more reliably, and with less data flying between servers.

If you find it troublesome to download your device OEM's app or its Assistant action, you're not alone. Many people don't want to have to do the sign-in work to get the most out of their smart plug or soundbar. In the next few months, though, Google will bring App Flip to developers — what this bridge allows for is a two-tap link-up in most cases from the Google Home app to whatever auxiliary services a device could want. App Flip already exists to insert proprietary account integrations on the web and with Android and iOS apps to Google account logins.

The last major user-facing changes have to do with Assistant routines in the fact that users will be able to create one for when they are present in a home and that there will be more routines coming from OEM partners. As with the custom routines users themselves have set up for their smart homes, OEMs can program theirs to work with any individual device or groups of them and not just from their own brand. Again, these will be coming out later this year.

Other changes behind the curtain that might not be as important to consumers include a new set of public APIs for OEMs that make anything in the Smart Home Entertainment Device categories and introducing a dedicated console for the Device Access program — a partner guidance scheme that helps them develop apps to control users' Nest devices.

If you're interested in more details on all of these updates, hit the Google blog post below.

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