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Google tweaks Word Clock to be more colorful on Nest Hub, Nest Hub Max

When you’re not using the Nest Hub for household smarts, it’s designed to blend into the background of any setting. This naturally comes with the option for users to choose how they want their idle Hub to present itself, and the device’s ‘Word Clock’ screen tends to be a popular choice. It would seem that Google has pushed an update to the Word Clock that alters its color scheme, bringing a more vibrant appearance to the previously black-and-white layout.

A Redditor first spotted the color shift on their Nest Hub last night, providing a look at the new Portal-esque blue and orange design. These colors are reflected on the light variant of Word Clock, and we were able to reproduce this screen on one of our Nest Hubs as well. In the light variant, the first two lines display in blue, while the third line displays in orange. The entire face rests on an off-white, yellowish background.

The clock face also comes in a dark variant, which we found to have been tweaked as well. A much more understated inversion of the light one, the dark clock face has hours showing in a soft pink and minutes showing in light blue. The background of this variant is a cool navy that appears black at lower brightnesses.

 

What’s curious about this sudden change is that it has only been applied to the Word Clock face, while the rest of the faces remain in grayscale (sans the Analog Clock, which has blue components). The Google Home app does not reflect the new color scheme in its settings either, still displaying the old version. It would be interesting to see a future setting that allows for custom color schemes, but since the current implementation is merely displaying an HTML page, it would require deeper integration.

 

If you have yet to see the new Word Clock design on your Nest Hub or Nest Hub Max, try restarting it from the Google Home app (which will force it to fetch it again). If that doesn’t help, you may need to enroll in the Preview Program under your Hub’s settings.

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