Scheduling your lights to turn on or off at specific times is one of the most essential functions in a smart home. This dates far back to when people would buy simple plugs with timers on them to accomplish this task.
These days, tech has become more advanced, most smart hubs can handle this for you. However, what if you don’t own a smart hub and use a simple Wi-Fi-enabled smart plug or light bulb for all of your lighting needs? Sure, asking your Google Assistant smart speaker to turn lights on or off works great, but there was no way to schedule this action, until now.
Over the weekend, a post on Reddit revealed the feature has gone live, and it is now possible to schedule turning your lights on or off. Plus, it’s much more powerful than the old school timers we used in the past.
Not only can you tell the lights to turn on or off at specific times, but you can also ask them to turn on in 10 minutes, or turn on for only 10 minutes. Below is a sampling of commands that are verified to work with the new feature after saying the “Ok Google” or “Hey Google” trigger phrase.
- Turn on the lights at 6 PM.
- Turn off the lights at 11 PM.
- Turn on the lights in 5 minutes.
- Turn off the lights in 5 minutes.
- Turn on the lights for 10 minutes.
- Turn on the lights at sunset.
- Turn off the lights at sunrise.
It’s also important to note that the examples above only mention lights, but these commands can be used for any smart home product. For instance, you could schedule your coffee maker for the next morning, or tell your sprinklers to water the grass at a specific time.
As great as this all is, there are some limitations. At this time, not all the features appear to be working. For example, you can only schedule an action for the current day or a day within the next seven day period. Also, the ability to cancel an action doesn’t seem to be working yet. Hopefully, Google gets this all worked out soon because this is one feature we’ve all been waiting far too long for.