You can now ask Google Assistant to move your media between rooms

It is hard to believe that not long ago, listening to music in your house was limited to Bluetooth speakers or clunky home entertainment systems with lots of messy wires. With the introduction of smart speakers and smart displays, we can now enjoy music and videos in any room with products like Chromecast or the newly released Nest Hub Max. Now there are many homes just like mine with smart speakers in most rooms, a smart display in the kitchen, and a Chromecast connected to multiple TVs. But there has always been one very obvious feature missing: the ability to move media between devices.

Stream transfer is a new feature from Google that does just that and is here to make it easy for people to move music, videos, podcasts and more between devices using your voice, the Google Home App or a smart display. To give it a try, you will first need to make sure all your Google Home/Nest devices are set up in the Google Home app. While you are in the app, you can also create groups, which will come in handy here in a minute. Once everything is set up, moving media around is pretty simple.

If you are listening to music in your bedroom and are ready to go relax on the couch just say, “Hey Google, move the music to the living room speaker.” I have tested this around my house and in our office and it works like a charm. If you have set up a speaker group in the Home App you can also transfer music from a single speaker to the group to fill your whole house with music.

The same command will work to move a YouTube video from your smart display to a Chromecast. You can also tap the cast control on the screen to move the video. Google said in a blog post that a similar cast button is available in the Home app, which you could use to move media, but I wasn’t able to find the button. Hopefully, it will show up in an update.

Stream transfer will work with most audio apps, including YouTube Music, Google Play Music, Spotify, Pandora, and more, but only YouTube is supported for video transfers at the moment. This awesome new feature started rolling out to all Chromecasts and Google Home/Nest smart speakers and displays earlier this month.