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The Nest Thermostat Can Now Be Controlled By Voice




Your house is cold, but your thermostat is way over there.

You could walk over to your thermostat and crank the heat, but pfft, walking. If you have a Nest, you could open up the app and control it that way, but, pfft, opening apps by hand. What is this, 2007?!

As of this morning, you can now control a Nest with your voice.

Making use of that $3.2 billion acquisition it made earlier this year, Google is integrating Nest functionality into Google Now. Want to make it warmer? Just say “Ok Google, change temperature to 75 degrees.” to your phone.

Meanwhile, Google Now will also throw up a card whenever Nest’s automated control settings kick in. If it decides to bump the temperature up on its own to prep for your arrival from work, for example, it’ll show up as a Now card.

A few things to note:

Because it relies on Google Now, the voice functionality will only work system-wide on Android for now. You can still use the voice commands on iOS, but it’ll only work through the Google app.
Importantly (and obviously, I hope) you also need a Nest installed for this to work. It won’t work with other thermostats, though it’d be funny to tell people otherwise and watch them yell at their house.
You need to opt-in on your Nest account first, because people would flip the hell out if Google turned this on by default.
Okay, Google. Now teach my house to respond to “Tea, Earl Grey, Hot.”

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