Google Assistant just removed the end time for music sleep timers without telling anyone

Many people who use Google Assistant around the home (those who aren’t completely and utterly frustrated and done with it by now) often play music on their Nest Hub, Nest Mini, or other Assistant-enabled devices to fall asleep faster. Putting on your favorite lo-fi or relaxing music as opposed to rain sounds can be a quick way to nod off into the next morning.

Without so much as a mention, Google seemingly removed the ability to do this. That’s right – without updating a changelog or anything to inform users who rely on the feature, it nixed the “end time” for when music should stop playing after you’re no longer conscious to stop it by voice.

In a tweet reply from Made by Google, the company confirmed that it felt the one-hour end time was not sufficient for most users per feedback it received, so instead of simply increasing it or offering varying options past one hour, it removed the feature entirely.

I honestly don't believe that. Who on earth would request to remove a feature like that when you could just say "end in 8 hours"? Also the feature still works on a phone and it says the sounds will end automatically when setting up a routine.

— Paul Hughes (@Paulmh5) December 19, 2022

As you can see, one user named Paul Huges, who was interfacing with Made by Google directly on the matter, was not happy about this. My guess is that if Google allowed users to do anything more than one hour for the end time of the music, it would be too much on its servers. I know, it sounds silly, but when you consider all of the services and server space Google uses for all of its users, it likely has to decide where to make cuts in order to keep everything running fine. These things add up, I’m sure.

Still, it’s weird how the company just cuts and trims where it pleases without telling anyone. I’ve had this complaint plenty, but nothing will ever come of such feedback. Google does what Google wants, and this makes that even more evident. According to 9to5Google, this has been gone for over a month, but the tweet above is the first acknowledgment of its disappearance.