Google has updated its smart home app with enhancements focused on camera features and user experience. The company said it has refreshed the Google Home user interface for faster navigation and smoother video scrubbing, allowing users to gain a broader view of camera activity.
New functionalities include the ability to filter and sort events by categories such as “Person seen,” “Package seen,” and “Glass break heard.” Animated thumbnail previews will help users quickly identify significant events captured by their cameras. Additionally, the video player window will remain visible while scrolling through recorded events.
Users subscribing to the Google Home Premium plan can access event descriptions in the timeline view. These features, along with zoomed-in thumbnail previews, will also extend to older-generation Nest cameras. Google has also updated its familiar face detection capabilities, enabling users to provide feedback on face previews with thumbs up or down to refine accuracy.
The app will filter out low-quality captures, including blurry images or small faces, enhancing the clarity of the face library. Moreover, new camera controls allow users to skip back or forward through event recordings in 10-second increments. Users can also swipe to switch between the timeline and events, resize the video player, and close the camera view by swiping down.
Many of these updates are powered by Google’s Gemini technology. Google confirmed that users in the early access program are testing a version utilizing Gemini 3.1. This version is designed to better manage multi-step commands, enabling users to perform tasks, such as adding new items and updating existing lists, simultaneously. The company noted that Gemini 3.1 also has improvements aimed at recognizing similar list names to avoid duplicates.
Enhanced alarm and calendar management will be available as Gemini resolves prior issues with AM/PM settings when setting alarms. Google indicated that these adjustments improve overall functionality in handling recurring all-day events.
