19 of the coolest things your Google Home can do (GOOG, GOOGL)

Google Home Mini

The Google Home is in millions of households.

Earlier this year, Google revealed that it had sold more than one Home smart speaker device every second since last October. According to our own calculations, that means Google sold at least 6.8 million Home devices during the last holiday season — and they seem to have been selling at a steady clip since.

Google sells four Home devices right now: the $50 Google Home Mini, the $130 Google Home, the $400 Google Home Max, and the new $150 Google Home Hub, all of which have Google's artificially-intelligent Assistant built in.

So now that the Google Home has spread, it helps to know what you can actually do with them. Some features are obvious — like asking for the weather — but others aren't so obvious.

Here are 19 of the coolest things you can do with your Google Home.

1. Play white noise while you fall asleep.

I prefer rain sounds to standard white noise, so I usually say "Hey Google, play the sound of rain." The device obliges with a steady downpour.

The sound usually lasts until I fall asleep, but if you want to be sure it turns off at a certain point, you can also set a sleep timer.

2. Broadcast something to every Google Home device in your house at once.

If you have more than one Google Home device in your home, you can broadcast to every single one simultaneously, sort of like an intercom.

If you say, "OK Google, broadcast that it's dinner time," each device will ring a dinner bell. You can also say, "OK Google, broadcast that it's time for school."

The broadcast feature even works when you're not in the house. Saying, "OK Google, broadcast I'm on my way home" will trigger the devices inside your house.

3. Control your smart home.

At this point, Google Assistant can control more than 1,500 smart-home products from more than 100 brands like LG, Whirlpool, GE, and Nest. You can ask your Google Home to dim the lights, change the temperature, turn on a kettle or microwave, or even start your Roomba.

And now with Google Home Hub, you can set up a hub for all your smart home products and control them on the screen.

You can check out a full list of compatible products here.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider