Manage people and permissions in the Google Home app

Note: Only persons who opt in to Public Preview can send invitations for the new access levels. To accept the invitation, you need to have the most recent version of the Google Home app. You don't need to be a Public Preview participant to accept the invitation.

Once you create a home to manage your devices, share control of your home and devices with family and housemates.

Public Preview participants can now select different access and permission levels to share their homes and devices. You can add someone as an admin to help you manage your home. Or, add them as a member to let them access only device controls and, if desired, settings and home activity.

What people of different access levels can do

When adding a person to the home, their access levels can be set based on the permissions that you want to give them.

• For trusted partners or people who co-manage the home with you, give admin access.
• If you want someone to have limited permission to control devices and change settings, or check activity data (such as camera history), add them as a member and customise whether they have settings or activity access.

Permission	Access level
	Admin	Member
Add, manage and remove people	✔
Delete the home	✔
Add and remove devices	✔
Share devices and data with partner services	✔
Link a subscription to the home	✔
Set up or manage presence sensing for the home or shared devices	✔
Full device control and device settings	✔	Only with Settings access
Manage home-wide settings (household automations, home address, Nest Wifi device network and features, Nest Aware and Nest Renew features)	✔	Only with Settings access
Use the home's devices in the Nest app	✔
Check device and home-wide history (camera, lock, Nest Wifi, home presence history)	✔	Only with Activity access
Check or manage camera clip-lending for devices in the home	✔
Deletion of any history in the home	✔
Basic device controls (e.g. live view of cameras)	✔	✔
Personal settings Assistant features like Voice and Face Match Sharing linked media services Managing personal presence	✔	✔

What's shared with Admin-level access

Admins can access and do the following:

Full control of all people, devices, services

• Add and remove other people, including you
• Delete the home
• Add and remove devices, like speakers, displays, lights or locks
• Share devices and data with partner services
• Access all devices and services
• Use and change all settings of the devices in the home
• Use and change all home settings
• Manage presence sensing settings on shared devices

Check activity from all devices and services

• Check activities and events from all devices and services linked to the home
  • This includes video and audio data captured on cameras and other devices, and home-wide activity like presence history
• Check services and subscriptions like Nest Aware

Check and change the home address

• The address can be used for Assistant queries on your home devices, location-based features like local traffic and weather, presence-based features like automations and Nest Aware features.

Check names, emails and access levels of all people in the home

• Everyone can check who is an Admin or Member

Set up Assistant features like Voice Match and share linked services like YouTube

• Set up personal results, Voice and Face Match, and automatically link their media services, like YouTube, to their Assistant
  • They can do this on existing and new Assistant devices, like speakers and displays, and Chromecast Built-In devices in the home
    Note: Only the primary user of a Pixel Tablet can set up Voice Match and personal results on Pixel Tablets.
• Services that they link to their Assistant will be available to everyone in this home 

What's shared with member-level access

Members have two additional permissions that can be toggled on or off for them: Activity and Settings.

Activity	Settings
Allowed to check device history, like camera and lock history. Allowed to check home-wide history, like automation and presence history. If you own Nest Wifi devices, this includes Wi-Fi network history. Note: Device and home-wide history can be stored for up to 60 days. Thermostat history can be stored for up to 2 years.	Allowed to manage all device controls (e.g. turning cameras on or off) and all device settings. Allowed to manage all home-wide settings, such as: Checking and editing of home address Addition, editing or deletion of automations If you have certain Nest devices or subscriptions, permission includes management of settings for Nest Wifi networks, Nest Aware and subscription features.

Members can access and do the following:

Limited control of devices and services

• Can't add, manage or remove people
• Can't delete the home
• Can't add, remove or share devices
• Can't share devices and data with partner services
• Can't link subscriptions to the home
• Can't manage presence sensing settings on shared devices
• Can manage personal presence settings
• Can add and remove their own services 

Note: Anyone with Admin access can turn on or off Settings permission for Members.

If an Admin grants Settings permission, Members can:

• Access all devices and services, those added later included
• Use and change settings of the devices in the home
• Use and change home settings

Check activity from devices and services

Note: Anyone with Admin access can turn on or off Activity permission for Members

• If an Admin grants Activity permission, Members can:
  • Check activities and events from all devices and services linked to the home (services include subscriptions like Nest Aware)
  • Check video and audio data captured on cameras and other devices, and home-wide activity like presence history

Check, and if allowed, change the home address

• The address can be used for Assistant queries on your home devices, location-based features like local traffic and weather, presence-based features like automations and Nest Aware features.

Check names, emails and access levels of all people in the home

• Everyone can check who is an Admin or Member

Set up Assistant features like Voice Match and share linked services like YouTube

• Set up personal results, Voice and Face Match, and automatically link their media services, like YouTube, to their Assistant.
  • This can be done on existing and new Assistant devices, like speakers and displays, and Chromecast Built-In devices in the home.
    Note: Only the primary user of a Pixel Tablet can set up Voice Match and personal results on Pixel Tablets.
• Services that they link to their Assistant will be available to everyone in this home
• For children, some Family Link supervision tools won't work in the home. Learn how to set up parental controls on Google Assistant devices.

What's shared with Google Accounts for children

Accounts for children under 13 years of age (or your country's applicable age of digital consent) will have Member access by default. Both Activity and Settings permissions are automatically off for child accounts. Only people with parental permission in a Family Link group can invite Google Accounts for children.

Child accounts have the same permissions as an ordinary member but are not allowed to:

• Create a home in the app.
• Manage or change the following:
  • Digital Wellbeing (features like parental controls, filters, etc.)
  • YouTube settings for Google Assistant-enabled devices
  • Familiar face library
  • Sleep Sensing

Invite people to a home

1. Open the Google Home app .
2. If you have more than one home, tap Favourites .
3. At the top, select the home that you want to edit.
4. Tap Settings Household and access  Add  Home member.
5. Enter the name or email address of the person that you want to invite to your home.
6. Tap Next  choose what access level you want to give between Admin or Member.
   • If you tap Admin  tap Invite to send the invitation.
   • If you tap Member  you can toggle on Activity or Settings permissions  tap Next  tap Invite to send the invitation.
7. If your Google family group isn't full and the person that you're inviting isn't already in one, you should get the option to invite them to your family group.
   • To invite them, tap Invite.
   • To skip this step, tap No, thanks.

The person that you invite should receive an email with instructions.

Note:

• You can have up to six members in a Google family group.
• If the person that you want to invite has already requested to join your home, instead of sending a new invitation, you need to accept that request.
• You can't invite a Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) account user.
• Only people with parental permission in a Family Link group can invite Google Accounts for children under 13 or the applicable age in your country or region.

Accept someone's request to join your home

When someone sends a request to join your home, you should receive an email with the invite request and a notification on your mobile device.

1. Follow the link in the email that you received or tap the notification on your mobile device.
2. Choose an option:
   • To invite a person to join your home, tap Continue.
   • To reject their request, tap Decline.
3. To continue, tap Next.
4. Review the person’s access to your home.
5. Tap Send.
6. If the person that you're inviting isn't already in your Google family group, you're asked if you'd like to add them. To invite them to your family group, tap Add to family.
   • To skip this step, tap No, thanks.
   • You can have up to six people in a family group. If you already have a full family group, this option doesn't appear.

Accept a home member invitation

1. Open the Google Home app .
2. Tap Favourites   Inbox .
3. Tap your pending invitation.
4. Review what's shared when you join a home.
5. To accept, tap Agree and join. Tap Decline to reject.
6. Create a nickname for the home. This nickname only appears to you.
7. The next time that you connect to the home's Wi-Fi, to finish Google Assistant setup, open the Home app which adds you to the devices connected to the same Wi-Fi.

To let the Google Assistant read or show results specific to you, choose to set up Voice Match and Face Match and choose to turn on personal results.

Remove yourself from a home

When you remove yourself from a home:

• You no longer have access to the home and the devices and services associated with that home.
• Other people continue to have access to the home.
• Other people should no longer have access to the devices or services that you set up, including Nest thermostats, alarms, locks or cameras. If you set up a Nest Cam with your Nest Hub Max, the Nest Hub Max won't be available.
  Exceptions: The following devices should still be available to other people in the home even if you remove yourself from the home.

  • Google Pixel Tablet
  • Google Nest Wifi
  • Google Wifi
  • Assistant-enabled speakers and displays
  • Chromecast
• You no longer have access to Nest Aware features, including video history.
• Other members continue to have access to Nest Aware features.
• Your Google TV account isn't removed from this home.
  • You have to sign out of this account on this home's Google TVs or in account.google.com under Security  Your devices.
• If you're the only member of the home, the home is deleted, including home data such as video history footage and thermostat settings.

To remove yourself from a home:

1. Open the Google Home app .
2. If you have more than one home, tap Favourites .
3. At the top, select the home that you want to edit.
4. Tap Settings .
5. Scroll down to the bottom of the Settings tab  tap Leave this home.
   Alternative: 
   1. Under the home name, tap the profile icons of people in the home, then select your profile icon.
   2. Tap Leave this home. If you're the last admin in the home, the option will show as Delete this home .

Remove other people from a home

You can only remove other people from a home if you have admin-level permission. When you remove people from a home:

• They're notified that they were removed from the home.
• Their account isn't linked to the devices and they won’t have access to the devices or services in the home. Learn more about FAQs on privacy: Google Nest.
• Assistant-enabled devices such as Google Pixel Tablet and Nest speakers and displays, including those set up by the removed person, should remain in your home. These devices are no longer linked to the person that you removed.
  Exception: Video history footage could be deleted and Nest Hub Max might get removed.
• They no longer have access to Nest Aware features, including video history.
• Your Google TV account isn't removed from this home.
  • You have to sign out of this account on this home's Google TVs or in account.google.com under SecurityYour devices.
• If the person that you remove from the home migrated their Nest Account and Nest devices like cameras and thermostats to a Google Account, those devices may be removed from the home. Data associated with their Nest devices and the home may be permanently deleted, including video history footage and thermostat settings.

To remove other people:

1. Open the Google Home app .
2. If you have more than one home, tap Favourites .
3. At the top, select the home that you want to edit.
4. Tap Settings .
5. Under the home name, tap the profile icons of people in the home.
6. Select the profile icon of the person that you want to remove.
7. At the bottom, tap Remove this person .