Google Home API preview opens, giving app devs the keys to your smart home

[phillynews215]

• Google announced its Home API at I/O last year.
• After limited early testing, the API is now opening to developers at large.
• Home API access promises to let devs code advanced automations reaching across device types.

Smart home devices have penetrated the mainstream, and whether you’ve just got a doorbell cam, or you’ve converted your entire house to smart lighting, more and more of us are embracing this kind of tech all the time. But for all the smart hardware we have access to, and all the apps we use to control them, that dream of an entire home’s worth of devices all harmoniously working in concert can still feel just out of reach. Luckily, companies like Google have been working for a while on cracking this problem, and today we’re learning about the latest steps Google Home is taking in pursuit of that goal.

Back at Google I/O last spring, we learned about plans to launch a Home API, which would make it easy for apps to tap into your smart home devices, accessing their sensors and data, and being able to control them. Much like the Home app itself allows you to interact with disparate hardware types across manufacturers, third-party apps using Home APIs could pull off the same sort of trick, empowering them to develop new automations and embrace whole-home control in a way not previously possible in Google’s ecosystem.




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