Google Nest Hub will now let anyone in your house control Digital Wellbeing features

Ben Schoon | Jan 31 2024 - 9:48 am PT

Google Nest devices such as the Nest Hub have their own set of Digital Wellbeing features which, soon, will be configurable by anyone in the household.

Digital Wellbeing is best known for the options provided on your smartphone, with devices as Google’s Pixel allowing you to pause apps, set timers for how long you can use an app, turning your display black and white at night, and more. But Google also provides a suite of Digital Wellbeing tools to the Nest Hub and other smart home devices. These include filters for the types of music & videos, as well as even the features that show up on these devices. There’s also “Downtime,” which lets you disable “Hey Google” and other features during certain hours of the day.

These feature are arguably most useful on the Nest Hub, but technically apply to all Google Nest and Google Home products with Google Assistant (Nest Audio, Nest Mini, etc).

Originally, these features could only be controlled by the device owner, the one that owns the “Home” in the Google Home app. But those controls are set to expand son.

In an email to customers using these features (as captured by Android Police), Google says that, “starting this month,” any member of the “Home” will be able to control Digital Wellbeing features for Nest devices in the home.

Google explains:

In order to improve the ability of home members to control their devices, we are making important changes to Digital Wellbeing. Starting this month, any home member will be able to manage Digital Wellbeing Filters and Downtime schedules. Previously, only the person who set up the device could manage these features.

These changes mean that you can now share the responsibility of managing these features with other people in your household, and aligns management behavior for Digital Wellbeing with most other device controls.

On a support page, Google also mentions this and provides context for how to share access to your “Home.”