what you need to know

• Google Home is testing expanded presence support for more smart home devices.
• The feature can now take into account the media playback status of other devices, such as game consoles or smart displays.
• You can try this feature in public preview of the Google Home app today.

Google’s presence sensing feature lets you set up home and away automation for your smart home devices based on your location. By far the most reliable way to use presence sensing is to let each family member choose geofence location sharing. The way it works is simple – if everyone leaves home, your out-of-office automation can run, and vice versa.

Now, 9to5Google has discovered that there are some new data points to consider for presence awareness. As part of the public preview of the Google Home app, presence sensing can consider the status of smart home devices to detect whether you’re at home or away, according to a support document.

“You can now use smart media devices for presence sensing,” support documentation for the public preview feature explains. “Your media devices can be present-aware through media state, such as when they detect media playing or when you turn them on or off.”

Google says the following types of smart home devices can be used for this presence sensing test:

• Smart speakers and displays
• TV (including Google streaming devices)
• game console
• Streaming sticks and boxes