If you’re a fellow parent, you probably spend a lot of time coordinating with your partner through on-the-fly conversations, text messages or phone calls. From figuring out who’s picking up the kids from dance practice to who’s tackling the weekly grocery shopping, managing various schedules can be especially stressful this time of year when kids are heading back to school.

Assignable reminders on the Google Assistant help families and housemates better collaborate and stay organized while at home or on the go. This means you can now create reminders for your partner or roommate to do things like pick up the groceries, pay a recurring bill, walk the dog—or send them a note of encouragement when they need it the most (“Hey Google, remind Mary that she will do great on tomorrow’s exam.”) The feature will be available over the next few weeks in English on phones, speakers and Smart Displays in the U.S., U.K. and Australia, and will work with Google Nest Hub Max when it’s available later this fall.

To assign a reminder, ask your Assistant, “Hey Google, remind Greg to take out the trash at 8pm.” Greg will get a notification on both his Assistant-enabled Smart Display, speaker and phone when the reminder is created, so that it’s on his radar. Greg will get notified again at the exact time you asked your Assistant to remind him. You can even quickly see which reminders you’ve assigned to Greg, simply by saying, “Hey Google, what are my reminders for Greg?” 

This feature will also work for location-based reminders with a specific address or landmark. For example, if you want to remind Claire to pick up flowers—and you don’t know the exact time she’ll be going shopping—just say, “Hey Google, remind Claire to pick up flowers when she gets to the San Francisco Ferry Building.” The Assistant will then create a reminder that will pop-up for Claire when the Assistant recognizes that she has arrived at the Ferry Building.

You can send and receive reminders only from people who are in your Google family group or those who have their accounts linked to the same Smart Display or speaker as you and are Voice Matched. The recipient must also be in a senders' Google Contacts. For parents who want to give their kids access to the Assistant on Google Home, you can create an account for kids under 13 (or the applicable age in your country) through Family Link, then link their Google Account and voice to Google Home. In addition, you have the control to block anyone from sending you reminders at any time through the new Assignable reminders section in Assistant Settings.

We think this feature will be a great tool to help families (and housemates) manage tasks this new school year and beyond.