In December last year, Google expanded Google Home’s member access feature to the public preview program. The feature lets you share smart home access with your loved ones, allowing them to control your devices too. Over six months later, the company is now finally rolling out the detailed permission control to the stable channel, bringing it to all Google Home users.
Starting with Google Home app v3.33, you can share your smart home with your family and friends. You can grant them either full admin access or customizable Member access, depending on the level of control you want to provide.
Member access grants limited access to your smart home devices, restricted to basic device controls and Assistant features like Voice and Face Match. Such users can also share linked media services and manage personal presence. If needed, you can provide member access users with full device control settings, household automations, Nest Aware, and the ability to check device and camera footage history. By default, Settings and Activity access are turned off for all new members, and you must manually enable them if needed.
Admin access has no such restriction. It grants the user full control over your smart home, including adding or removing devices, managing other users, linking subscriptions, and sharing access with others. They also gain full access to your home devices in the Nest app, including cameras, lock, and Nest Wifi.
Google shared a table in its announcement on the Nest community forum highlighting the difference between the two access levels.
The new two-tier permission system is ideal for providing complete smart home access to your spouse or close ones, while member access is perfect for offering limited access to other household members. The latter is also a useful addition if you want to provide a house guest with access to your smart home.
Share Google Home access with children
Additionally, Google is now allowing sharing Google Home access with children under the age of 13, provided they are a part of your Google family group. However, they can only receive Member access — admin access is not possible.
You can find the new sharing settings in Google Home under Settings → Household & access → Add → Home member.
