
Thanks to Google’s unique presence sensing technology, Nest devices are getting a boost to their Home and Away Routines. Now, instead of just changing the temperature on your thermostat or automatically toggling lights on or off when you come or go, your Nest Hub and Nest Mini devices will now have the ability to “only ring when home” in regards to Duo and other call providing services. Previously, if you had these set up on your device, they would ring upon you receiving a call, even if you were elsewhere.
In version 2.36 of the Google Home app, which is now rolling out to iOS and soon to Android, there’s a new option for this. It can be found under the ‘Device & Call Settings in the Voice and video calls menu.

‘When this is on, Assistant-enabled speakers and displays that you’ve allowed to receive calls will only ring when your phone is home. This feature requires access to your phone location. If you turn this feature off after setup, your home may still continue using your phone location for Home and Away Routines’.
‘Only ring when home’ description
If you’ve yet to set up Home and Away Routines for your smart devices, I would highly recommend it. The level of automation that you can achieve just by allowing your setup to determine whether or not you’re within the walls of your home is pretty incredible. Though I’ve complained in the past about how unintelligent presence sensing seemed, I’ve seen it improve over time. It’s still not perfect, but the more updates we get that add conditional and situational context to how it operates, the better.
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