One of the best features of Home is the ability to control all of the smart devices in your house, letting you turn on the lights or set the thermostat without fiddling with any apps or controls. Now you can use Assistant on your xel phone to do the same thing.

First spotted by Android lice, the settings menu in Assistant on the xel adds a new tab for Home control, letting you talk to your various devices without lifting a finger. And you don’t need you have a Home to do it. eviously, the xel could interact with the Home to operate Nest smart devices, but now your phone can do it all on its own.

That means you can control all of your Home-enabled smart devices, not just the ones that are owned by phabet. According to Android lice, the requirements appear to be version 6.12.19 of the app ay Services 10.2.98. The new feature is a server-side one, however, so if you’re not seeing it on your phone, you may have to wait for to flip the switch.

OK, , now what: Slowly but surely, Assistant on the xel is gaining feature parity with Home. ile the overarching strategy for ‘s voice-operated AI is still hazy, it appears that we’re building toward some kind of a unified system, where saying “OK, ” does the same things across all of our devices.