Google today announced a small but important update for its Google Home devices: you will now be able to control all of your Bluetooth speakers and stream music to them right from your Google Home devices.
Until now, you could only use your Google Home’s Bluetooth capabilities to stream music to them (from your phone, for example). But now, you’ll be able to use your Google Home Mini which doesn’t exactly have the most impressive built-in speakers, to control the Bluetooth-enabled bookshelf speakers you have in your living room.
Indeed, as Google notes in today’s announcement, the company decided to add this feature because its Google Home Mini users requested it. The regular Google Home does have a pretty passable speaker, after all.
To enable this new feature, open the Google Home app on your phone or tablet, look for your device settings and then the “default music speaker” menu. There, you’ll now see an option to pair a Bluetooth speaker.
Since that Bluetooth speaker doesn’t have to be in the same room as your Google Home, you’ll now be able to extend Home’s multi-room capabilities to rooms that don’t have a Home in them, too, and play music or podcasts on all of your speakers and Google Home devices simultaneously.
Since that speaker doesn’t talk back to your Home, though, you obviously won’t be able to use it to give voice commands to the Google Assistant. But it’s probably good sound you’re after — not more Google Assistant mics in your home.
