Google Home Gets New Night Mode, Assistant Gets Male Voice

New features for Google Home and Google Assistant were discovered recently. The Home smart speaker now features a Night Mode, while Assistant now comes with a male voice.

Google Home Night Mode

One of the problems with Google Home and other smart speakers is their volume remains static. For example, if a user sets the volume at the highest level while listening to music, the Google Assistant’s voice will also have the same level of volume. The new Night Mode fixes this problem.

The new Night Mode feature was first discovered by Android Police through the Google Home preview program. For those who may have forgotten, Google launched the preview program back in August so that developers and users could try out new and upcoming features for the Google home speaker.

The new Night Mode feature for Google Home was discovered in the Home app under the Device settings options. Night Mode is described as reducing the volume responses while also decreasing the brightness of the LED lighting during specific times.

When users activate Night Mode, they will have to set a time span for when Home will reduce its volume/LED lighting automatically. For example, users could enable Night Mode at 10 p.m. and have it disabled by 6 a.m. During that time span, the Google Home’s volume will be reduced.

As for the LEDs, users will have to set the level of brightness for themselves. Once that’s accomplished, the Google Home speaker will automatically adjust the brightness to that level when Night Mode is activated during the predetermined time span.

Users also have the option to set specific days for when Night Mode is automatically activated. For example, users could have Night Mode only enabled during the weekdays, while it can be disabled all throughout the weekend.

The Night Mode option also features a “Do Not Disturb” option. When enabled, this entirely blocks sounds for reminders, messages and other notifications. The only thing that can make a sound when “Do Not Disturb” is enabled are alarms and timers.

Night Mode for Google Home should be available now to all users who are part of Google’s preview program. There’s no word yet on when this will be released for everyone, but it will likely go through more testing before that happens.

Google Assistant’s New Voice

Another thing that was discovered by Android Police is a new male voice for Google Assistant. This can be set on user’s smartphones or even for the Google Home smart speaker.

To change Google Assistant’s voice, users must open the settings for Assistant on their smartphone or through the Google home app. The option can be found under Assistant Voice inside Preferences. “Voice I” is the original female voice, while “Voice II” is the new male voice for Google Assistant.

Users will only have to select one voice option and the change will be reflected to their smartphones and the Google Home smart speaker. This kind of modification ensures that users have the same type of experience across all their devices.