Connect Google Home to your phone for super convenient speakerphone calls. That’s how

Your Google Home ($ 130 in QVC) The smart speaker might just be the best hands-free speaker you didn’t even know you had. It’s great to use Google Home to bring the whole family together for a call with other family members and friends, and it’s rewarding to use voice commands to start and end calls to loved ones or even businesses.

You can also use your phone to do other things, like scroll through social media, play games, or send text messages, while talking. Even the pint-sized Nest Mini ($ 49 at Crutchfield) it has a bigger and louder speaker than any other you can find in a mobile phone.

You’ll want all the calls you make with Google Home to appear as your regular mobile phone number when calling friends and family, so we’ll show you how to set it up first. Then we have everything you need to know to start making calls with Google Home.

First, link your mobile phone number and sync the contacts

By default, Google Home will display “No Caller ID” when making calls. You’ll want to change that, so people know who’s calling.

one. Open the Google Home app and touch Settings.

two. Scroll to Services and touch Voice and video calls, then touch Mobile calls.

3. Tap Your own numberand then enter your number and the six-digit code that Google sends you to verify.

Four. Make sure Your own number is selected under Your linked services.

Before you can make a call saying, “Hey Google, call my mom,” you must tell Google your mom’s number. At the bottom of the Mobile calls setup page where you linked your phone number, next to Contact load, tap Turn on. This will load your current contact list and set the Google Home app to sync with your contacts, so any changes you make in the future, such as adding new contacts or changing the number of a current contact, will also be updated on Google. Home.

Use Voice Match to allow multiple people to make calls

If your Google Home setup has only one user (presumably you), anyone who interacts with him will be limited to calling only his contacts. But if you set up Voice Match, which allows multiple people to get personalized results on Google Home, they can also link their contacts and make calls from their own number. Here’s how to add someone to your Google home page:

one. Open the Google Home app and touch Settings.

two. Tap House then Add a person.

3. Enter the name of a contact on your phone or an email address and Google will send you an invitation.

Note that the person must have or create a Google account and log into the Google Home app on their phone or tablet to join your household. Once they do, they will be given the option to accept or decline your invitation.

To configure Voice Match:

one. Open the Google Home appand touch your personal icon in the upper right corner.

two. Tap Assistant in the top menu bar and then tap Voice match.

3. Tap Teach your Assistant your voice and follow the prompts to create a voice profile.

Make calls using basic voice commands

Once everything is set up, you can do almost everything you normally do when making calls on your smartphone, with just voice commands (starting with “Hey, Google” or “OK, Google”).

• To start a call, say “Call [contact name]. “
• If you call a business, say: “Call [business name]. “ If there are multiple locations, add the street of the location you want to call. If you don’t know, you can ask where the closest location is and then say: “Call that one.”
• You can also say, “Mark again”.

To end a call, you can say:

• “End the call.”
• “Hang up.”
• “Disconnect.”
• “Stop.”

You can also tell Google Home that “Mute” and “reactivate”.

The more uses you find for your Google Home, the more places you’ll want to have one in your home – check out these unusual (but delightfully useful) locations where you should put your extra smart speakers. To ensure that the speaker you are speaking to is the one responding, be sure to adjust the sensitivity of the trigger word. Here’s another thing Google Home is great at that you may have overlooked – it’s an excellent meteorologist.