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Google Home app gains ‘Air Quality’ setting as Nest Hub AQI starts appearing

Last month, Google announced that the Nest Hub would start showing Air Quality (AQI) information in the US. Many are now seeing a new setting in the Google Home app, though the actual reading is not yet widely rolled out on Smart Displays.

Opening the Google Home app and navigating to device settings will show “Air quality” as a new option in the “Photo Frame” menu. It appears underneath “Banner notifications” and “Weather” with it set to “Hide” by default. It also appears in the on-device, “Hey Google, change photo frame” menu if you scroll down.

Show air quality when available in your area.

That said, switching that new preference to “Show” does nothing to actually enable AQI on Nest Hub and Hub Max units we tested over the past few days.

In fact, we started seeing the Air Quality badge on one Smart Display in the bottom-left corner time and weather condition/temperature widget this weekend without having to manually turn on the setting ahead of time. 

Once live, tapping will launch the full report with a color-coded bar/scale and readings from three or so nearby stations. You can expand each location’s readings to get the official advisory. This can also be accessed with, “Hey Google, what’s the air quality near me?” – and other variants.

There have yet to be any reports of the top-right Air Quality card appearing, though that might be reserved for “Unhealthy” AQI and act more like a warning notification. Back in August, Google said this addition would be rolling out “over the coming weeks.”

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Avatar for Abner Li Abner Li

Editor-in-chief. Interested in the minutiae of Google and Alphabet. Tips/talk: abner@9to5g.com

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