If you have a not-so-awesome experience having Google Assistant turned up unintentionally, then it’s your lucky day. Google has finally rolled out the sensitivity settings for “Hey Google” and “Ok Google” voice commands.
A lot of users have been complaining about this issue for some time now. And, Google finally listened (no pun intended). The search giant announced in September 2019 that it will be rolling out an update to Google Assistant that could help reduce the sensitivity of smart speakers to the wake word.
The thing is, speakers like Google Home or Nest can pick up the wake word based off on random conversions especially in a noisy environment. It would cause the device to launch Google Assistant even if you do not intend to. But not anymore. With the new update, you can now easily adjust the sensitivity settings to make your device respond to your “OK, Google” command when you are actually talking to it.
This new feature is very important in terms of security and convenience. You can now be assured that Google Assistant doesn’t fire up randomly, uploading your data to the cloud even if you don’t intend to.
How to Adjust Google Assistant’s Sensitivity Settings to Hey Google
The new feature should be available to most devices now. Supported devices include Google Home, Google Home Mini, and Home Max, and Nest Hub and Hub Max.
Here is how you can set the Hey Google sensitivity settings:
- Open the Google Home app.
- Find the device you want to update from the list.
- Tap the device, then tap Settings (the gear icon) in the upper right corner.
- Scroll down and under Device Settings tap Hey Google sensitivity.
- Drag the slider up to make Google Home more likely to hear your voice and down otherwise.
- Once you get it right, tap back and adjust your other speakers if needed.
That’s it. That’s how you adjust the wake word sensitivity on your Google Home speaker with the newest update from Google. You can now confidently put it just about anywhere without having to worry about privacy issues and unnecessarily activating Google Assistant.