Google Home

Modified on Fri, 22 Nov 2019 at 12:31 PM

Emby with Google Home

What is Google Home?
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Commands

What is Google Home?

Google Home is a powerful speaker and voice Assistant. Play your music. Call your friends. Ask it questions. Control your home. It's your own Google, always ready to help.

The Emby Skill enables users to get information about and control playback of their media library on any Emby compatible device. Once you have succesfully linked your Emby account to Google Home, you can start playing your favorite movies, TV shows on your devices with your voice.

Get started

The first step is to add Emby to your Google Home account by following the steps here and searching for the Emby home app within actions (this is not a home control app). Once this is done, you will need Emby Connect to link your Emby account to Google Home. Emby home also requires Emby premiere.

Google Home requests are sent from outside your network. You will need to ensure your Emby server is accessible remotely.

Why is Emby connect required?

Emby connect is used to provide your server information to Google Home over a secure connection.

Google Home account linking

The first time you invoke Emby Home, you will be asked to link your Emby account. Enter your Emby connect credentials and select your server. This will enable the skill and work across all your Google Home devices linked to your Google Account.

You can link or unlink your Emby account here.

My server is not available to be selected, what do I do?

If you don't have an Emby account, follow the steps here, otherwise:

In your server dashboard, Users > Select the Emby user with Emby connect (green cloud icon)
Remove the username or email from the Emby connect field, hit save.
Re-add the information to recreate the Emby connect link.

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Commands

How to use Google Home

Every command needs to start with: Ask MB Home {insert command}.
Alternatively, you can start an Emby session with: Hey Google Home, talk to MB home.
The benefit of using an Emby session is it allows you to give multiple commands without needing to invoke Emby for as long as the session is active. Sessions are automatically terminated after 8 seconds of inactivity.
You can stop whatever Google Home is doing with: Hey Google Home, cancel/nevermind.Google Home will also abandon your request if you don't reply within 8 seconds.
Chromecast is not compatible due to limitation by Google at this time.
Not all commands are compatible with every Emby apps. If you encounter an issue, post here.
To direct a command to a specific player, append on {player name} to the end of your command.
Here is the list of supported media type: episode, movie, show, season, song, album, artist, audiobook, channel, playlist.
If you are unsure of the active Emby user in Google Home, ask Emby home who's the user.
Parts of commands in parenthesis given below are optional

Which player?

You can set a player as default. If a device/player name is not included at the end of your command, it will be automatically directed at your default player.

change the player (to {player or device name})
change my player to Living Room TV

Additional users

Share the watch status of currently playing content by adding other Emby users to your session.

who is in the session
add {user name} to my session
remove {username} (and {username 2}) from my session

Navigation

You can navigate your interface by saying the movement or action related to what you want to do.

move up/down/left/right
page up/down
select
mute/unmute
go home
go to the next/previous letter
show/display/bring up the context menu/TV guide/search/player menu (osd)/settings

Playback

pause, previous, next, play (the selected content), stop playback
set the volume (to {percent})
change the audio (to {language})
change/enable/disable subtitles
change the subtitles (to {language})
seek to {time} or start from the beginning
seek to (plus/minus) {time}
jump to chapter {number}
go to the next/previous chapter

Media Playback

By default, Google Home is set to search video content when the content type is not specified. This means, for any other types, you need to include the content type to yield proper results.

play (the movie) {movie}
player (the show) {series}
resume the episode from {series}
play the artist {Artist}
play the song {song} (from {Album}, by {Artist})
play the audiobook {title}
tune in channel {name}

Here are a few examples

put on season 2 of Game of Thrones
play Supernatural, season 5, episode 12
play the new episode of Gotham
watch the next episode of Orange is the new black

Suggestions

Reply to the suggestion with a yes or a no.

give me a suggestion
suggest me a {content type, i.e. movie} (genre {genre})
I don't know what ({episode}) to watch
what's good?

Play random content

play something
play a movie genre {genre i.e. horror}
play an episode of {series}
play a few episodes

Play random music

drop the beat
put on music (genre {genre})
play songs (genre {genre})
play songs by {Artist}
play songs from the album {Album}

Recently added

what's new
what's been recently added?
what {content type, i.e. movie} is newly added
what is on {channel name}?

Next Up

what's next
what is up next

Continue playing

what can I keep watching?
what (show/movie/audio book) was I in the middle of?

Item modification

add/remove to/from my favorites {content type, i.e. movie} {title}
set/mark as watched/unwatched {media type, i.e. movie} {title}

Transfer or Copy playback between devices

Transfer will stop playback first. Copy will simply resume playback where you left off, on the device of your choice. By default, it will fill in the missing information with your default player.

transfer/copy the stream/playback (from {player}) (to {player})
switch/copy the stream/playback (to {player}) (from {player})

For example

Transfer the playback from chrome to theater.
Copy playback to iphone. omitting the origin of the playback will automatically grab it from your default player

Help

If you are ever uncertain what commands the player supports, ask Emby for:

the available commands
help