Are we really celebrating pre-defined voice actions in smart home apps as “innovation” in 2026? The real story here isn't the incremental improvements to Google Home – it’s the painfully slow pace of genuinely intelligent automation, and how much of our lives are still tethered to clunky, pre-packaged routines. Google’s latest update, rolling out this month, adds a handful of pre-set actions – announce the time, play music, tell a joke – to its Home app’s Automation editor. It’s…fine. But it feels less like a leap forward and more like Google finally catching up to what users have been cobbling together with IFTTT and custom scripts for years.
The update, reported by Rajesh at Android Police, includes these pre-defined actions alongside the ability to delete those pre-loaded “Good Morning” and “Bedtime” routines that clutter the app. While the latter is a genuinely useful quality-of-life improvement – finally, some control over the digital nagging – the former feels like a band-aid on a much larger problem. Google is still forcing users to think in terms of rigid commands, rather than allowing for truly contextual and adaptive automation. The fact that these actions are limited to the full Automation editor, and absent from the AI-assisted “Ask Home” feature, highlights this disconnect. You can still use “Ask Google” for custom commands, but that requires more effort and technical know-how than the average user possesses.
Drawn from androidpolice.com.
This isn’t about dismissing the update entirely. The ability to download longer video clips – up to five minutes now, instead of fragmented shorter clips – from Google Home on the web is a practical improvement for anyone relying on Nest cameras for security. And the new in-app feedback mechanism for automations, allowing users to report issues like slow execution or incorrect triggers, is a smart move. Google is, at least, acknowledging that these systems aren’t perfect and actively soliciting user input. But these are refinements, not revolutions.
Consider the broader context. Smart home adoption, according to a recent report from Statista, has plateaued. Growth in 2025 was a meager 3.8%, down from 12.5% in 2023. The primary reason? Complexity. Users are overwhelmed by the setup, maintenance, and sheer lack of intuitive control. They want their homes to understand their needs, not require a PhD in scripting to dim the lights at sunset. Google’s current approach, relying on pre-defined actions and limited AI assistance, isn’t addressing that core issue. It’s adding layers of polish to a fundamentally flawed system.
The tension here is clear: Google wants to maintain control over the smart home ecosystem, ensuring data privacy and security. But that control comes at the cost of flexibility and innovation. Open platforms like Home Assistant offer far more customization, but require a level of technical expertise that most users aren’t willing to invest. Google is stuck in the middle, trying to balance these competing priorities. The result is a slow trickle of incremental updates that fail to deliver on the promise of a truly intelligent home.
And the web app improvements? They’re a tacit admission that the mobile experience isn’t cutting it. Downloading longer video clips is a workaround for a problem that shouldn’t exist in the first place – namely, a clunky and unreliable mobile app. It’s like offering a better shovel to dig yourself out of a hole you created with a poorly designed excavator.
Looking ahead, I predict that by the end of 2027, we’ll see a significant shift towards edge-based AI processing in smart homes. Google, and its competitors, will be forced to move more of the intelligence onto the devices themselves, rather than relying on cloud-based processing. This will enable faster response times, improved privacy, and – crucially – the ability to handle more complex and nuanced automation scenarios. The question isn’t if this will happen, but when users will demand it, and whether Google will be nimble enough to respond before the market moves on.
