Josh Hendrickson
One of the best features of owning several smart speakers in your home is whole-home audio. It’s like Sonos, except affordable. But previously, with Google devices, you had to go through the effort of creating speaker groups before you play music. Now, the company is rolling out an update to let you create a group on the fly, even while playing music.
The new update works for both Google-connected speakers (like the Nest Mini), and smart displays. You’ll need a smart display, like the Nest Hub Max, to take advantage. Until now, you had to go into the Google Home app and create speaker groups before playing your music. Then when you asked for a song, you could specify which group to use, if any. But with this change, you can reverse the order.
After you start a song on a smart display, you can tap on the cast button to get a list of other available smart speakers and displays in your home. That was already the case, but tapping them moved your music, and stopped the playback on the current device.
With the change Google is rolling out, you can now use your cast button to create a new music group by tapping on the devices you want to add. Each tap will add to the group, and music will start up in another room without stopping playback where you are.
One nice bonus to the feature is the option for stereo music. If you have multiple Nest speakers in the room, you can add a second device to the group to get stereo sound. And if you want, you’ll still be able to move what you’re listening to over to another room, which is handy if you need to move from the living room to the kitchen.
The updated change works with YouTube Music, Spotify, Pandora, and more, and Google says it’s rolling out now.
Source: Google
