I have some fond memories of trick-or-treating as a kid every Halloween like I’m sure we all do — one of those great holiday traditions when your life is still hopefully pretty innocent and mostly stress-free, and you can roam the neighborhood dressed up and knocking on doors asking for candy. Besides the fun of racing home and dumping it all out to check out the totality of your haul, one of the other fun things I remember is the extent to which some neighbors would go all-out, adding scary decorations outside and maybe even greeting you when you got to the door with spooky sound effects.
Especially if you’re one of those homeowners who gets into the spirit and likes adding lots of Halloween-themed touches to your home this time of year, Google has just added a delightful treat to its Nest Hello video doorbells that will help you do exactly that.
Starting today through early November, Google explains in a company blog post, “all Nest Hello users in the US will have the ability to transform their doorbell chime into a cackling witch, a ghost, a vampire or a scary monster to make your front door a neighborhood destination on Halloween night.” What’s more, the new festive, seasonal “chimes” don’t end there. The company is also rolling out themed ringtones for winter later in November.
The “spooky sounds” Google has added to Nest Hello are actually among a slew of new Halloween-themed treats and fun additions to Google products, such as this other addition along the same lines: Say you’re throwing a Halloween party, and once your guests have all arrived you want to play a long string of jams to have some music going in the background. All you have to do is command your Google Nest speakers (“Hey Google, get spooky”) and your device will start playing an hour-long playlist of on-themed sounds and music.
Now if Google would just add a feature that prevents me from over-indulging on candy, we’d be set.
