If you use an Android smartphone and have smart home devices, such as cameras or lights, you can use widgets on your phone's home screen to control them more quickly. Instead of opening the Google Home app, these widgets provide a direct way to access your devices. Previously, these widgets kept checking for updates from connected devices even when your phone was locked or not in use. Now, they pause these background checks when the screen is off, which helps save battery life on both your phone and your connected devices. However, the widgets still update instantly when you unlock your phone, ensuring you always have the most current information. Google is also rolling out early access to a new feature called the Model Context Protocol (MCP) for Google Home. This protocol allows third-party AI assistants, like ChatGPT or Claude, to interact directly with smart home devices and access their event history. To use this feature, users need to set up a Google Cloud project, enable the Home API, and configure an OAuth consent screen. This setup is more complex and likely aimed at users with technical expertise. For now, early access is limited to Google Home Premium Advanced subscribers in the U.S., which costs $20 per month or $200 per year. Google has not yet announced when this feature will be available in other regions or for other subscription tiers, but it plans to expand access in the coming weeks. Alongside these updates, Google has improved its Gemini voice assistant, which is built into Google Home. Gemini now asks fewer unnecessary follow-up questions and ends conversations in a more natural way. The assistant also has fewer interruptions during Live mode on compatible devices. When switching between user accounts, users should experience fewer issues like "Home not found" errors or unexpected preference resets. Additionally, several camera-related bugs have been fixed. For example, live stream thumbnails no longer turn black after returning from full-screen view on Android devices, and scrolling through video history no longer causes delays when switching to unrecorded time ranges. On iOS devices, a recent fix ensures that the "Live" button correctly directs users to the live stream from a recorded event. These improvements aim to enhance the overall user experience with Google Home, making it more intuitive and efficient for managing smart home devices and interactions with the voice assistant.