You’ll soon be able to restrict device access in the Google Home app

Managing a household of smart devices and family members can be a challenging experience. Making things more difficult is the fact that you can’t really control the access someone has to certain smart home devices. With a platform like Google Home, it’s largely setup to be an all-or-nothing approach.

That means your kids either have access to things like smart lights, speakers, and displays, or they don’t. That could change, however, according to a few different new reports. Google is apparently making tweaks to Google Home that could provide household managers with the ability to restrict devices on a case-by-case basis.

According to Android Police, when you go into the Google Home settings and navigate to Household, you’ll see the usual list of all the people in your home. When you click on someone, however, you’ll see a new page where you can see what access level people have to the devices on your network.

As of now, it doesn’t appear as though Google Home allows managers to restrict access. But Android Police is speculating Google is laying the groundwork to change that. Meanwhile, 9to5Google previously spotted strings of code that hinted at such a feature being introduced.

“This person will have access to the selected devices during the following schedule,” the code said.

Android Police points to the Nest app as an example of how these features could work.

“Family accounts let other people share access to your home and your Nest products in the Nest app,” a Nest support page reads. “Depending on the level of shared access you choose, people you invite can add, remove, and control Nest products in the Nest app.”

Restricting access could be helpful if, for example, you’re a parent and you don’t want your kids controlling the lights or speakers in your room. The Google Home app has yet to address this, but recent changes and strings of code suggest these features are imminent.

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