How to use Google Home to activate Do Not Disturb on your Android smartphone

Ben Schoon | Apr 11 2019 - 1:51 pm PT

Google Assistant is full of awesome tricks, and recently it’s just added another. Here’s how to activate Do Not Disturb on your smartphone using just a single voice command with a nearby Google Home device.

How to turn on Do Not Disturb with Google Home

Ensure your Android phone and Google Home are linked to the same account
Ask Google Home to mute your specific device

As the folks over at Android Police detailed recently, Google has opened up the ability to control Do Not Disturb from Google Assistant on other devices. This means you can mute your Android phone without even touching it.

Link your Android phone and Google Home to the same account

The first thing you’ll need to do to get this working is to make sure all of your devices are linked to the same primary Google account. Of course, you might have more than one account linked to your phone, but as long as the account on your Google Home is also on your Android device, things should work properly.

You can double-check this by opening the Google Home app on your device and seeing your speaker/smart display in the list of linked devices.

Ask Google Home to mute your device

As long as your two devices are linked to the same account, you should be able to issue just one Google Home command to get your device set to Do Not Disturb mode. What’s important to note is that, generally speaking, you won’t be able to just say “mute my phone.” Unless you have just a single device connected, you’ll probably have to state the exact device name to adjust the setting.

For example, saying something like “Hey Google, Silence my Pixel 3 XL” would set that device to Do Not Disturb. However, if you’ve got another device connected to that account, it won’t adjust the setting there. Other options for commands include “Set my phone to Silent,” “Enable Do Not Disturb on my phone,” or “Turn on Do Not Disturb on my phone” will adjust the toggle. Of course, saying the opposite will set things back to normal.

Another tip is that Google will let you turn on Do Not Disturb for all of your connected devices, phones and Google Home devices alike by simply saying “Silence all my devices.”