Google Assistant SDK
The Google Assistant SDK integration allows Home Assistant to interact with Google Assistant. If you want to use Google Assistant (for example, from your phone or Google Home device) to interact with your Home Assistant managed devices, then you want the Google Assistant integration.
This integration allows:
- Sending text commands to Google Assistant to control devices supported by Google Assistant but not by Home Assistant. Examples:
- Set Nest Guard to home and guarding
- Start vacuuming
- Stream front door on living room TV
- Turn off kitchen TV
- Play rain sounds on bedroom speaker
- Broadcast messages to Google Assistant speakers and displays without interrupting music/video playback. Examples:
- Coffee is ready
- Someone is at the front door
- Smoke detected in the master bedroom
- Water leak detected in the master bathroom
- Playback Google Assistant audio response for any query on any media player. Examples:
- Tell me a joke
- Say the ABC
- Sing happy birthday
- What does the elephant say?
- Having a conversation with Google Assistant using the conversation integration via text or voice.
Prerequisites
You need to configure developer credentials to allow Home Assistant to access your Google Account. These credentials are the same as the ones for Nest or Google Sheets. If you have already set up credentials, you can do step 1 and then skip to step 13 on the below instructions.
This section explains how to generate a Client ID and Client Secret on Google Developers Console.
- First go to the Google Developers Console to enable Google Assistant API
- Select an existing project or create a new one from the dropdown menu in the upper left corner.
- Click to enable this API.
- Click on the field on the left of the screen, OAuth Consent Screen.
- Select External and Create.
- Set the App Name (the name of the application asking for consent) to anything you want e.g. Home Assistant.
- You then need to select a Support email. To do this, simply click the drop down box and select your email address.
- You finally need to complete the section: Developer contact information. To do this, simply enter your email address (same as above is fine).
- Scroll to the bottom and click Save and Continue. Don’t have to fill out anything else or it may enable additional review.
- You will then be automatically taken to the Scopes page. You do not need to add any scopes here so click Save and Continue to move to the Optional info page. You do not need to add anything to the Optional info page so click Save and Continue which will take you to the Summary page. Click Back to Dashboard.
- Click OAuth consent screen again and set Publish Status to Production otherwise your credentials will expire every 7 days.
- Make sure Publishing status is set to production.
- Click Credentials in the menu on the left hand side of the screen, then click Create credentials (at the top of the screen), then select OAuth client ID.
- Set the Application type to Web application and give this credential set a name (like “Home Assistant Credentials”).
- Add https://my.home-assistant.io/redirect/oauth to Authorized redirect URIs then click Create.
- You will then be presented with a pop-up saying OAuth client created showing Your Client ID and Your Client Secret. Make a note of these (for example, copy and paste them into a text editor) as you will need these shortly. Once you have noted these strings, click OK. If you need to find these credentials again at any point then simply navigate to APIs & Services > Credentials and you will see Home Assistant Credentials (or whatever you named them in the previous step) under OAuth 2.0 Client IDs. To view both the Client ID and Client secret, click on the pencil icon, this will take you to the settings page for these credentials and the information will be on the right hand side of the page.
- Double check that the Google Assistant API has been automatically enabled. To do this, select Library from the menu, then search for Google Assistant API. If it is enabled you will see API Enabled with a green tick next to it. If it is not enabled, then enable it.
Configuration
To add the Google Assistant SDK integration to your Home Assistant instance, use this My button:
If the above My button doesn’t work, you can also perform the following steps manually:
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Browse to your Home Assistant instance.
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In the bottom right corner, select the Add Integration button.
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From the list, select Google Assistant SDK.
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Follow the instructions on screen to complete the setup.
The integration setup will next give you instructions to enter the Application Credentials (OAuth Client ID and Client Secret) and authorize Home Assistant to access your Google Assistant API.
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Continue through the steps of selecting the account you want to authorize.
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If your Google account settings are set to a language not supported by the SDK – which can be noticed by the authentication screen of Google being localized in that language – the authorization will fail without a clear error. Changing the language at the bottom of the error page to one that is supported by the SDK will allow you to continue to the link page of Home Assistant.
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NOTE: You may get a message telling you that the app has not been verified and you will need to acknowledge that in order to proceed.
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You can now see the details of what you are authorizing Home Assistant to access with two options at the bottom. Click Continue.
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The page will now display Link account to Home Assistant?, note Your instance URL. If this is not correct, please refer to My Home Assistant. If everything looks good, click Link Account.
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You may close the window, and return back to Home Assistant where you should see a Success! message from Home Assistant.
Troubleshooting
If you have an error with your credentials you can delete them in the Application Credentials user interface.
If commands don’t work try removing superfluous words such as “the”. E.g. “play rain sounds on bedroom speaker” instead of “play rain sounds on the bedroom speaker”.
If broadcasting doesn’t work, make sure: the speakers aren’t in do not disturb mode, the Home Assistant server is in the same network as the speakers, and IPv6 is disabled in the router.
The easiest way to check if the integration is working is to check My Google Activity for the issued commands and their responses.
Limitations/known issues
- Multiple Google accounts are not supported.
- Personal results are not supported yet since that requires creating an OAuth client ID of the Desktop app.
- If you see the issued commands in My Google Activity, the integration is working fine. If the commands don’t have the expected outcome, don’t open an issue in the Home Assistant Core project or the underlying library. You should instead report the issue directly to Google here. Examples of known Google Assistant API issues:
- Media playback commands (other than play news, play podcast, play white noise, or play rain sounds) don’t work.
- Routines don’t work.
- Broadcast doesn’t work with IPv6.
- Broadcast to specific rooms often doesn’t work for non-English languages.
Configuration
On the configure page, you can set the language code of the interactions with Google Assistant. If not configured, the integration picks one based on Home Assistant’s configured language and country. Supported languages are listed here.
Services
Service google_assistant_sdk.send_text_command
You can use the service google_assistant_sdk.send_text_command to send commands to Google Assistant.
| Service data attribute | Optional | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
command |
no | Command(s) to send to Google Assistant. | turn off kitchen TV |
media_player |
yes | Name(s) of media player entities to play response on | media_player.living_room_speaker |
Examples:
service: google_assistant_sdk.send_text_command
data:
command: "turn off kitchen TV"
# Say a joke on the living room speaker
service: google_assistant_sdk.send_text_command
data:
command: "tell me a joke"
media_player: media_player.living_room_speaker
You can also send multiple commands in the same conversation context which is useful to unlock doors or open covers that need a PIN. Example:
service: google_assistant_sdk.send_text_command
data:
command:
- "open the garage door"
- "1234"
Service notify.google_assistant_sdk
You can use the service notify.google_assistant_sdk to broadcast messages to Google Assistant speakers and displays without interrupting music/video playback.
| Service data attribute | Optional | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
message |
no | Message to broadcast. | someone is at the front door |
target |
yes | Rooms (in Google Assistant) | bedroom |
Example to broadcast to all speakers:
service: notify.google_assistant_sdk
data:
message: time for dinner
Example to broadcast to speakers in selected rooms:
service: notify.google_assistant_sdk
data:
message: time for dinner
target:
- bedroom
- basement
Conversation agent
You can add an assistant with the conversation agent set to “Google Assistant SDK”. Then you can converse with Google Assistant by tapping the Assist icon at the top right of your dashboard:
Or by calling the conversation.process service.
Note: due to a bug in the Google Assistant API, not all responses contain text, especially for home control commands, like turn on the lights. These will be shown as <empty response>. For those, Google Assistant responds with HTML and Home Assistant integrations are not allowed to parse HTML.