Much like the Android smartphone ecosystem, Google has its own Assistant smart speakers but there are plenty of other speakers and displays made by companies like Sonos, Lenovo, and others. And now Google is bringing features of its own speakers to those other devices.
Voice Match is the first feature coming to non-Google smart speakers and displays. With it, you can train Google Assistant to recognize your voice so that you get personalized responses for things like calendar reminders and traffic on your commute, even if you share your smart speaker with other people in your house.
A smart speaker or display can be linked with up the voices of up to 6 different people.
Also coming to third-party smart speakers and displays is the ability to adjust the device's sensitivity to the "Hey Google" hotword. This setting is located in the Google Home app and lets you make your device more sensitive if you want it to respond more often or less sensitive if you want to reduce unintentional activations.
Finally, you can choose your default speaker for playing music. For example, you can say "Hey Google, play some jazz" on a speaker in one room and have the music begin to play on your preferred speaker in another room.
You can choose your preferred speaker for music in the Google Home app by finding the device you want to set as preferred, tapping "Device settings", then selecting Default music speaker.
These new features are rolling out to third-party smart speakers and displays starting this week.