Not sure if it’s coming tomorrow, but Google Home Max likely codenamed ‘biggie’

The latest Google Home app has lots of hints about what Google is going to show off tomorrow, with most of those being some new pictures of the long-ago-leaked Google Home Mini. What’s also interesting, though, is that it has some redacted assets for another new Google Home product…

We told you about a second device we’ve heard about from a couple sources supposedly called the Google Home Max, and while we’re not sure if it’ll be announced at Google’s event tomorrow, we now have some of the first hard cut-and-dry evidence for the device’s existence.

Here’s the skinny: the new Google Home app has several new images to show the new Google Home devices in the Home app. The ones that have the _j.png suffix are for the Google Home Mini, which is codenamed “joplin” as confirmed by a Wal-Mart listing that also leaked earlier today. We shared those images here. Digging a bit shows that these images are also correlated with a device referred to as “google-home-tiny” in the app’s code.

There are another set of images, though, that it seems Google has intentionally redacted. They are identical, but they have the suffix of _b.png and happen to be correlated with a device referred to as “google-home-big”. These “b” images have been replaced with a single black pixel in the latest version of the Google Home app.

But if this is the Home Max, and the “j” refers to “joplin,” what does the “b” refer to?

While the Home Mini is codenamed “joplin” as a reference to Janis Joplin, a source tells us that the Google Home Max is hilariously codenamed “biggie” in a reference to Biggie Smalls. If you remember, the Google Chromecast Audio, as we told you a couple of years ago, was codenamed “hendrix”. So these seem to fit the pattern.

We can’t say anything with complete certainly since this codename is coming from just a single source, but it seems pretty believable. As I said, we’re unsure if “biggie” will be announced tomorrow, and we’re not even sure if “Google Home Max” will be the official retail name — if it even launches. Stay tuned here at 9to5Google to learn more as we do.

https://twitter.com/hallstephenj/status/915245429733896193

Dylan contributed to this article