Which Digital Assistant Has the Best Morning Routines?
Waking up by an alarm clock, even by your smartphone, at this moment seems almost an ancient custom. If you’ve gotten into the craze for smart speakers – mostly one of Google’s or Amazon’s speakers or Apple’s wood-staining HomePod – then you have a lot more to prepare for today than the pesky braaap-braaaap-braaaaap alarm clock.
I love a rigorous morning routine, especially digital, because I’m usually too tired or absent-minded to tackle my daily to-do list in the early hours. Luckily, Google Assistant / Alexa / Siri are always happy to help. But each helper gives you different options for automating your morning routine. Here’s what I learned after sharing many cups of coffee with all three (in no particular order):
Google Assistant / Home
How to plan your morning routine
You access Routines for your Google Smart Speaker by opening the Google Home app for iOS or Android and clicking the purple Routines icon followed by Manage Routines. Google provides you with a bunch of “ready-made” routines that you can use, but heck, because you can easily customize your own – it’s much more fun.
Triggers you can use
Your routines can be started with a voice command that you enter yourself – whatever you want. You can also assign multiple words or phrases to trigger in case you like to mix them up (or, like me, you tend to forget trigger phrases). In addition, you can also have programs that run at specific times and on specific days, and you can select a specific speaker for them (if you have more than one).
Actions you can run
One of the great things about Google’s implementation of routines is that you can trigger any action that you would otherwise tell your speaker (or Google Assistant on your smartphone). There are plenty to choose from – and I very much doubt that you or anyone else has memorized the most important ones – but you can also joke a little with what your Google speaker says to himself.
If you need a little help with some ideas, the Home app can also offer you popular actions to choose from, including standard options such as turning connected smart items on and off, setting temperatures or lighting, setting commute times, screaming events in your calendar or the speaker’s broadcast of the drive home (no doubt to the delight of your roommates). You can even make your google speaker say whatever you want – yes, whatever – when you run a specific routine. “Wake up, damn it” is popular in my room.
Anything else?
While you can create your own trigger to have your speaker play a podcast or your favorite wake-ups, the Home app’s Routine Builder also has an Add Media section that makes it easy to select news entities, audiobooks, and even soothing sleep sounds to listen to. (You will need to enter your favorite albums, playlists, radio stations, or podcasts if you want the Google speaker to play any of them.)
Amazon Alexa / Echo
How to plan your morning routine
You access the Amazon Echo Speaker Routines in the Alexa iOS or Android app. Click on the three-line icon in the upper left corner to open the sidebar of the application, and then click on “Procedures” to get started.
Triggers you can use
Like Google, the Amazon Alexa app can also fire triggers when you say any word or phrase you want, or at a specific time on any day or days you want. You can also configure routines to run on connected devices. (Unfortunately, my digital door lock does not work, but I may have a normal trigger where my Echo Plus detects that the temperature in the room it is in is out of range.) Finally, you can set up the geofence to trigger. the daily routine whether you arrive or leave the area.
Actions you can run
Unlike Google, you can’t super-customize your routines with Alexa – don’t enter the commands your smart speaker should fire unless you have a creative idea of how you want it to perform a specific action (or a silly answer ). Instead, you’ll choose dishes from the Alexa menu: Alexa can speak pre-filled or customizable sayings, tell you what’s on your calendar, change its volume, play music, read news, and control connected smart home devices (to name a few events).
I especially like the “Please Wait” activity, which is at the very bottom of the list in the Alexa app. It sounds so simple on paper – wait, Alexa – but it’s an incredibly useful way to add delays to your actions. This is great if you want to turn on your smart lights in the morning, but want to give yourself a little time to acclimate before the smart speaker blows you up with its daily to-do list. Or, for that matter, suppose you want to create a custom “Nap” routine that includes your favorite song after a delay [insert your usual sleep times here]. It is better to wait for such procedures.
Anything else?
If you really want some fun , consider integrating Alexa with services like IFTTT or Stringify . This is especially true if you want to control devices that the Alexa app may not support by default, such as a cloud-connected NAS. At the very least, I found it incredibly helpful to be able to tell my Echo to hibernate my NAS instead of fiddling with hibernating in the appropriate app. (Both sites also work with Google Assistant, so you can also yell at Google speakers to initiate custom actions.)
Apple Siri / Home
How to plan your morning routine
You have two options. You can create automation through the Apple Home app, or create Siri shortcuts (in iOS 12 or later) to trigger a wide variety of actions. Unless you have multiple HomeKit-enabled devices (as well as the HomePod, Apple TV, or iPad that you use as your HomeKit hub), you probably want to go for the shortcut. Also, shortcuts can be much more complex than automation.
Triggers you can use
If you’re on the automation path, you can activate HomeKit devices to take action based on status – for example, when you press a switch on the HomeKit indicator – and time or location. If you are customizing shortcuts, you can click on the shortcut button that you create as a widget, on a shared sheet, or on the home screen. You can also connect it to Siri and launch it with a word or phrase.
Actions you can run
I’ll concentrate on Siri shortcuts for this, as it’s probably obvious what actions you can trigger on your HomeKit device – lights can turn on and off, or go to a scene; thermostats can set a specific temperature; smart switches can activate or deactivate; etc. If you want to combine these hardware actions with actions based on various data points, like when your HomePod speaker reads you the news or hears Siri tell you what’s happening on your calendar, you need to follow the shortcut route.
As we said earlier, Siri Shortcuts allow you to do an incredible amount of things on your devices. Basically you will be limited by your creativity and coding ability. You probably won’t really be programming a lot, if at all, but you will definitely need to do a bit of work to figure out how to achieve what you are trying to do.
Or, in other words, creating a daily routine is a headache. While this is an extreme example of a Siri Shortcuts morning routine, and I love how comprehensive it is, download it and install it on your iPhone to see how much logic it takes to create a thorough morning routine. Even if you want a shortcut that only does a fraction of what this mega-routine can do , such as a fairly standard morning briefing, be prepared to spend some time figuring it out (or changing existing shortcuts you find online).
That’s the blessing and curse of Siri Shortcuts: you can do almost anything, but you’ll have to do a lot harder work (and scratch your head) than with the more traditional assistant or smart speaker app.
Anything else?
I don’t have a HomePod, so I can’t test it myself, but it seems currently not possible to stream music to an AirPlay device using the Siri shortcut. In other words, you can only wake up to a soothing song emanating from your iPhone or iPad (as part of your daily shortcut), which seems silly.