Google's smart home panel is low-key my favorite Google feature ever

It’s been a few years since Google took the first steps towards what has now become its most ubiquitous and consistent feature across multiple devices: the smart home panel. What started out as simple controls under the power button on phones running a stock version of Android 11 has morphed into a powerful Android 15 feature that marries Google Home, Pixel and non-Pixel phones, the Pixel Tablet’s dock mode, Wear OS smartwatches, and the Google TV Streamer.

Really? Yes. It’s almost an unbelievable wonder and feat to see so many Google teams working together to carry one feature across devices and ecosystems, but they’ve done it, so let me walk you through what I love most about this smart home panel and how I use it in my everyday life.

One master list of favorites — take it or leave it

Open the Google Home app on your phone, and you’ll first land on the Favorites tab. If you haven’t populated it yet, I suggest you do because that’s where the smart home panel is birthed. Tap Edit on the bottom left, pick the devices you need to control or monitor the most, save that, and then tap Reorder to organize them however you like.

Unlike the main Google Home app, which organizes everything alphabetically by room name, this is your chance to group lights together, sort by your most used devices, or figure out any order that makes sense to you and your smart home usage.

I’ve gone back and forth a lot on my personal configuration, but I found that sticking to the room order makes the most sense to me. What I did, though, was sort the rooms according to the ones I use the most, not alphabetically. I also appreciate that the Favorites tab gives me big buttons on the top to control my cameras, lights, and climate devices (thermostats).

The real benefit comes into play once you have your Favorites in place and sorted. Yes, you can quickly see these in the Home app, but they’re the same favorites that Google uses across phones, tablets, TVs, and watches to let you quickly control your smart home.

The one smart home panel to rule them all

A unique but unified experience across phones

Although Google’s smart home panel started as a minor bonus under the power button, now it’s mostly accessible through other means on your Android phone. On many phones, you can get to it from the Home quick settings tile when you drop down the notification shade. But it can also be picked as a lock screen shortcut on Pixel phones or as part of the Device Control chip on Samsung phones.

Once again, I love the fact that Google was able to convince companies as stubborn as Samsung to support its own smart home ecosystem besides SmartThings. Even if the way of accessing the panel varies by brand, the fact that the experience integrates natively with each Android skin but remains the same once you actually open the panel is what makes this such a successful feature for me.

Whether I’m on the go, traveling millions of miles away, lying in bed, sitting on the outdoor deck, or walking across my home, I can just reach out to my phone and know I have near-instant control over my smart home devices. Better yet, the panel works even if my phone is locked, so I don’t have to waste time unlocking before I start a vacuum or raise the thermostat’s temperature when I feel chilly.

Making use of the Pixel Tablet’s continuous power

Similar to Pixel phones, the smart home panel is accessible through the quick settings tile or lock screen shortcut on the Pixel Tablet, but it really comes into its own when the tablet is docked. Continuous power means you can have 24/7 access to your smart home devices to monitor their state and control them. The large display helps with that, too, especially if you have many devices like I do.

At first, the panel was only accessible through a Google Home icon when the tablet was docked in digital photo frame mode, but now Google has added a dedicated Home Controls Hub Mode that simply shows the smart home controls at all times. It’s perfect if you don’t care about showing your photos on the tablet, but I do, so I keep it tied to the Home shortcut on the photo frame.

Since my Pixel Tablet is docked on my office’s desk, I use the panel mostly to control my office’s lights and the floor’s shared thermostat and vacuum. It’s been incredibly helpful to brighten up the lights and launch various color scenes when I want to take photos for my Android Authority articles.

Scaling well across tiny and large displays

Perhaps, though, my favorite part of this smart home panel experience is the fact that it scales so well across the tiniest and largest displays I own. On the small display of my Pixel Watch 3, the Google Home app opens straight into my favorites, so I only have to scroll through the devices I control and monitor the most — not everything in my home. For me, this puts the lights, thermostats, vacuums, and air purifier a few scrolls away instead of wasting time browsing the app by individual room and device.

Moving on to the biggest display in my living room, the panel carries the same look, favorites, and order on my Google TV Streamer. I love that I can simply tap the star button on the new TV Streamer remote to open this panel and quickly check if the door is locked, dim the lights, or start a movie-watching routine. Because yes, it supports routines and automations, too!

More than a simple on/off button: Controls and routines

When the smart home panel first launched, it had some limited controls baked in. Now, though, almost every device type I own gives me nearly full control over it without having to dig into the Google Home app. I can change the brightness and color of lights, change the thermostat’s mode and temperature (and view the ambient temperature and humidity), lock and unlock my door, start and stop my vacuums, change the mode and speed of my air purifiers, and stop what’s playing on the TV.

Even better, though, you can add your most-used automations and scenes to the Favorites list, and they’ll show up in the panel, too. I use a nighttime routine every evening when going to bed, and sometimes I just don’t want to speak aloud to my speaker to trigger it, so I silently launch it from my smartwatch or phone.

My only heartbreak is that the panel doesn’t support my current security cameras (from Xiaomi and TP-Link), so I can’t view a livestream of what’s happening inside my home when I’m away. Google mostly supports Nest cameras with this feature, so I have to open the separate Mi and Tapo apps to check out my cams.

There are also times when I’ve wished I could have different favorites and sorting methods on different devices because I don’t control the same lights when I’m watching TV or using my phone, for example, but I think that would detract from the uniformity, consistency, and simplicity of Google’s approach. Eventually, I came around to appreciate that I didn’t have to think much about what I could control and where — it’s all the same everywhere. And that’s what I love the most about this smart home panel.

Looking back now, it’s tough to remember the smart home panel’s early days when few phones had it, and you had to manually pick the smart home devices to show each time you switched between phones. Now, it’s nearly ubiquitous, very consistent, powerful, and easy to manage, no matter where you use it. I’d still love to see it on all Google TV models and would appreciate it being more accessible on non-Pixel watches and tablets, but we’re on the right path here.

Ultimately, my only wish is for Google not to mess this up. It’s taken years to reach this point; I don’t want to return to a fragmented smart home approach. And if only the Google and Android teams could convince each other to work together on more projects to achieve a similar consistency in our experiences… well, Android would be in a much better place now, wouldn’t it?