If you’re missing something in your Google Assistant or Google Home since converting to English (AU) last week, never fear because Actions on Google will soon be here.
The launch of Google Home in Australia saw some users converting their imported Google Home to use the new Australian language support. A side-effect was losing access to the many third party integrations known as ‘Actions on Google’.
Actions on Google allowed many integrations on Google Assistant/Home such as Our Groceries, as well as Logitech’s Harmony hub integration. Google’s description of Actions on Google says:
Actions on Google lets you build apps for the Google Assistant. Your apps can help you engage users through Google Home, eligible Android phones, iPhones, and in the future, through every experience where the Google Assistant is available.
So far, Actions on Google is only supported in the US, however a recent email sent to UK developers began advising that Actions on Google was set to launch for English-GB ‘Soon’.
We’ve certainly seen that there’s a lot of people after it and Google has been working towards releasing Actions on Google to other countries for some time. Ex-pat Aussie and Google Developer Advocate Wayne Piekarski said as far back as April in a post on Google+:
You may have seen recently an announcement that Google Home is available in the United Kingdom with support for English (United Kingdom). However, the Actions on Google platform is currently only available for English (United States), and this is configured with the settings in your Google Home app. We are working on making Actions on Google available in other languages, but we do not have a formal release date at this time. We will make announcements in this community with any updates as they occur.
All this is well and good, but what about Australia? Google will be bringing Actions on Google to Australia. A Google spokesperson said:
Soon Google Home will be open to more third party apps for the Assistant, giving you access to more of your favourite services and content.
We’ll be checking in with Google in the near future on the progress of bringing Actions on Google to Australian Assistant and Home users and hopefully we won’t be waiting too long.
If you want to learn more about Actions on Google and program your own you can check out more on the Actions on Google website.
If you’ve already developed an Action on Google with an Aussie slant, let us know and we’ll feature them here when it launches.
