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We’ve all had it happen. You’re sitting in your living room, minding your own business and a random conversation with your spouse triggers a ‘Hey Google’ moment. Generally, it’s little more than an irritating inconvenience but the annoyance is real and sometimes you just want the Assistant to mind her own business without actually having to disable the mics on your devices. I find this especially frustrating when it’s my Sonos Beam soundbar. Nothing like the Assistant responding to a query that I didn’t place in the middle of an episode of The Incredible Dr. Pol.
Thankfully, that nag will soon be reduced by the ability to control the hotword sensitivity on your Google Home, Nest and Assistant-enabled devices. Google announced last September that the feature would arrive and roughly six months later, the ability to adjust the sensitivity of ‘Hey or Ok, Google’ should soon out to users. According to a report from The Verge, XDA Developers’ Editor-in-Chief Mishaal Rahman tweeted screenshots of the feature in action from what I presume was discovered from an APK teardown. Check out the tweet from Mishaal.
Finally, the Google Home app is about to add "Hey Google" sensitivity options for each Google Assistant device.https://t.co/a7R2pxLCLI pic.twitter.com/LJ6GpAj7CY
— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) April 21, 2020
According to 9to5Google, the feature is coming packed in version 2.21 of the Google Home app but the rollout is still limited at this point. I’ve double-checked my Home app and it is currently still on version 2.19. If you’re into loading APKs, APKMirror does have version 2.21 available for download but there’s no guarantee that this feature will work so I don’t recommend doing so unless you know what you’re doing. Regardless, it shouldn’t be long before you’ll be able to make your Assistant a little less or more sensitive if that’s been on your list of wants. As soon as we see a wider rollout, we’ll update this article and give you a walkthrough on how to access the feature.
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