Google Assistant can be found in a ton of entertainment devices from dongles to boxes to soundbars and more. The company has been working on allowing manufacturers to tailor user commands that are specific or, at least, work best with the purposes the devices serve.

If you aren't familiar with the dev-side situation, simply put, Google has been categorizing the types of devices that incorporate Assistant as well as certain traits — bundles of user commands related to device-specific concepts such as temperature setting for thermostats and playback for TVs and soundbars.

The company has just announced a new batch of device types that are going into a subset of types called Smart Home Entertainment Devices, first introduced in April.

The types are:

  • Audio-video receiver
  • Streaming box
  • Streaming stick
  • Soundbar
  • Streaming soundbar
  • Speaker

A few of these are technically broken out from larger type category — previously (via the Internet Archive), streaming boxes and sticks were stuffed within the Television type.

The company is also releasing a new trait, Channel, that lets Google Assistant to recognize commands to change the channel on a device that receives streaming or broadcast TV channels. This trait joins the first SHED-related traits that were also announced in April: AppSelector, InputSelector, MediaState, TransportControl, and Volume.

Google Assistant currently supports 78 device types and 36 traits.