At the end of last year, the Google team redesigned and simplified the process of creating Google Assistant routines, introducing the sunrise and sunset triggers and soon the Mountain View giant will allow users to schedule a delay between the time when it is given the command and start of the assistant routine.
This novelty has not yet been widely implemented and so far it seems that it has only been identified by a user, who reported it on Reddit. From the Google Home app you need to tap the purple Routine shortcut and then the “+” button in the lower right corner.
This new option appears after tapping Add Action: you will see the same list of features as before but there is a new Time Adjustments section at the bottom which houses Delayed Start and a selector to start the action after a tot of minutes.
A delayed start could be a useful feature on a number of occasions, such as when you need to pre-set the operation of household appliances (you may want to start the coffee machine only when you are almost ready to take a sip or start the robot vacuum cleaner only after leaving home).
This delayed start feature is available with the latest version of the Google Gome app (i.e. release 2.42.1.14) and only for custom Google Assistant routines. Probably over the next few weeks, it will be made available to a larger number of users.
You can preview all the news studied by the Google Home app team by downloading one of the beta versions from APK Mirror (find the dedicated page by following this link) while you can download the latest version of the application from Google Play Store.
