Google Home can finally control Google Play Movies

Update: You're now able to play both movies and TV shows through your Google Home using a Chromecast following an update after Google I/O.

Once you've linked your video apps with your Google account, you'll be able to ask the speaker to play a specific TV show or movie, pause it, turn on the subtitles as well as a variety of other commands that'll come in useful if you lose the remote.

It works with Netflix, Google Play Movies & TV as well as YouTube TV, plus some markets will be able to access CW, CBS, HBO Now, Viki, Crackle, Red Bull and STARZ just by asking the smart speaker.

Original story: It was a bizarre omission in the first place, but Google has finally patched up a key gap in its Google Home smart speaker's functionality.

Announced at Google I/O, you'll finally be able to control your Google Play Movies library using a Google Home speaker. 

So long as you've got a Chromecast device attached to your TV, barking a movie request to your Google Home speaker will have it play from your Google Play Movies library.

A long time coming

What makes the announcement a little strange, or at least a little late, is the fact that Google Home launched with the ability to fulfil these sort of commands from third party services from the start.

As soon as Google Home launched it was able to play movies and shows from Netflix to a Chromecast with just a voice command input, with the likes of HBO Go following shortly afterwards. So, for a first party app to only just be getting similar support seems a bit of an oversight from Google.

With little else hardware-related revealed at Google I/O, it's a small but appreciated new feature for Google Home owners – especially with Amazon's Echo devices and Apple's Homepod bringing some worthy competition to the table.

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