Google is introducing new ways the Assistant can be helpful at home, so you can get an extra hand from Google when you’re whipping up a meal in the kitchen, working with your kids on homework, enjoying TV or getting ready for a good night's rest.

The Google Assistant can help you check in on the family at home with broadcast, one of our most popular Assistant features. With broadcast, you can send a message from your phone to your smart speakers and smart displays at home. Google is now
making this feature even more useful, with the ability to reply back from a smart speaker or Smart Display to your phone. When the reply is received back on your phone, a notification will pop up and the message will be transcribed. You’ll can respond with text or by voice with the Assistant. This feature will be available across all smart speakers and Smart Displays in the coming weeks.

Smart Displays, like the Google Home Hub, Lenovo Smart Display or JBL Link View, are companions in the kitchen for browsing recipes and getting cooking instructions. To make discovering new recipes even easier, you’ll now see a Recommended Recipes card right from the home screen.

Recipes will be regularly updated with smart recommendations based on the nearest meal time and whichever season it is. And when you discover a recipe that youwant to try out in the future, you’ll be able to save and view it in your own personal cookbook using the Google Assistant. These new features will be available across all Smart Displays in the coming weeks.

Google is also adding the ability to set up an alarm from popular animated characters with the Google Assistant on smart speakers. These new alarms will have signature music, jokes, facts, words of encouragement and other fun messages from characters in LEGO City, LEGO Life, and LEGO Friends and from Nickelodeon's Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (including the voices of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, Donatello and April O’Neil).

Storytime is also an important activity, and earlier this month, Google added a new feature for the Assistant called Read Along that makes it possible for your smart speaker to bring a story to life with sound effects and music as you read. No tthe cmompany is bringing more content to this format with a new book, "Ara the Star Engineer." Featuring real-life women engineers with diverse backgrounds, the book sparks children's interest in STEM, focusing on themes around courage, creativity, coding and collaboration.

And if you don’t have a book with you, just ask the Google Assistant to tell you a story. In the coming weeks, Google is adding 25 new family-friendly stories by Nickelodeon, including PAW Patrol’s "The Pups Save the Bunnies," Dora the Explorer’s "Dora's Super Sleepover," Blaze and Monster Machines’ "Let's Be Firefighters" and many more.

With the Home View dashboard on Smart Displays, you can control popular media and entertainment devices right from the screen. Google recently added new devices, so now TVs from Panasonic, Roku,LG, set top boxes from Telstra, and a smart remote from Logitech Harmony all work with Home View.

If you’re more into podcasts or audiobooks, you can now adjust the playback speed with the help of the Google Assistant by saying "Hey Google, play at twice the speed" or "play faster."

And if you’re looking for a gift, Google's Smart Light Starter Kit includes Google Home Mini and GE’s C-Life bulb. They come pre-linked, making the setup process easy. The kit will be discounted at just $31 starting from November 21-28th, and you can find it at the Google Store, Best Buy, Target, Lowes and Walmart.com.

To help streamline your morning, Google is rolling out this week Routines to the Clock app for Android phones. So after dismissing your alarm, the Google Assistant can immediately start a routine, triggering multiple things - like telling you about the weather and traffic on your commute to work, turning on your coffee maker and lights, playing the news, and more. You can customize your routine right from the Clock app.

When it’s time to settle in for the night, you can ask the Google Assistant to switch your devices to do not disturb mode with a single command. You can say things like, "Hey Google, silence my phone." This will be coming soon to the Google Assistant on phones. Sweet dreams.