How do I switch between users with my Google Home?

Question

A new card in the Google Home app says that multiple users are now supported:

Multiple users now supported

Now, you and others in your home can get a personalized experience from your Assistant on Google Home.

How does my Google Home plan to tell between me and someone else using the device? Will I need to say who I am each time I use the device, or will it recognise my voice and switch automatically?

This article subtly hints at the Google Home getting the voice recognition feature, but I couldn't find any authoritative sources confirming it.

Is there any information to confirm how the multi-user feature will work yet?

Answer 1

Google has now announced how to set up multiple accounts on the Google Home:

1. Click the 'multi-user is available' card in the Google Home app
2. A list of devices will pop up. Find the correct one, then click "Link your Account"
3. A wizard will then guide you through the steps of adding a new user. To train the device to recognise your voice, you have to say "OK Google" and "Hey Google" twice, and from then on, your account is linked and your voice is recognised by the device.

The voice recognition is apparently done locally on the device through a neural network, and I'm pretty surprised about how little training data the device needs to add a new user; the days of spending hours repeating sentences to train a speech-to-text program are gone!

The function is apparently only available in the US at the minute—Google promise that it's coming to the UK soon enough, though.