After we first saw the functionality in development last September, Google appears to be preparing for a rollout of ‘access roles’ for household members in the Google Home app.
It is helpful for families and roommates to be able to share your Google Home household with other users so that everyone can interact with smarthome devices through their phones and speakers. However, it has long been a one-size-fits-all approach. However, that is about to change with the arrival of new “access” roles in the Google Home app.
The people at Android police noted that the Google Home app for Android is at least rolling out the UI for this change, even though nothing appears to be fully functional at this point. Under the settings for ‘household’ you will see a new page ‘Access overview’ with ‘access data’ and ‘devices’. At this point the ‘details’ page is empty, but everyone is marked as a manager. There is also a device list of all devices associated with the home, but there are no options for that yet. Google offers a little explanation about this feature on the page, but presumably this section can change when settings are switched.
Everyone in this house can see all activities and access all devices and settings, including those added later. They can also edit all home settings and add and remove devices, services and people in this home.
Probably this is waiting for some more server-side changes on Google’s side before the roles are fully functional. In any case, it seems like a handy new option!
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