Two years ago, lockmaker Yale announced a partnership with Nest, the smart-home company owned by Google, to make a connected lock. It looked great and promised integration with some of the most popular smart-home gadgets, which is probably why we didn’t hear anything else about it for the next two years.
But at CES this year, we finally got a launch date, and in an update landing tomorrow, the Yale x Nest lock will be compatible with the Google Assistant. That means you can lock and unlock the door using your voice, as well as integrating auto-locking into an evening routine (or anything else you can think of).
According to Google, the integrations include:
- Remotely check the status of the lock from anywhere
- Lock the door with a simple voice command
- Include locking doors in a Google Routine, such as “Goodnight”
Because it’s a Google Assistant integration, you’ll be able to control the Yale x Nest lock from any Google Home device, as well as smartphones that integrate the Google Assistant. That covers most modern Android phones.
The system is battery-powered, and if you ignore enough alerts, you could theoretically get locked out. That’s why Yale has provided a way to unlock a dead lock from the outside, using a 9V battery to enter a code into terminals on the bottom of the lock.
Nest as a company has changed since 2015, when the lock was first announced, and so have the basic integrations. The Yale lock communicates with all of Nest’s systems, so you can pair it with a Nest Hello doorcam to let visitors into your house remotely, or pair it with the Nest Secure alarm so that the alarm de-activates when you enter your code.
