We are avid users of Family Bell for our family routines. I saw that it was being discontinued and all bells needed to be recreated in Routines, which I've completed, however some of my family bells are still active and working and I can still see it in the Google Home Settings. Does anyone know what is actually happening with family bell? I'd prefer to use it over routines for several reasons.
- Family bell allows for pausing during a date range for multiple bells at one time (ie - school break) where routines require you go through 1 by 1 and deactivate and save, then you must remember to go back in and reactivate before they are needed again.
- Family bell automatically adds a notification chime. I had to manually program in 3 chimes into my routines to try and closely match and then sometimes the prompts play over each other (for example, it will chime, announce the weather, & the custom announcement to leave for school all at the same time making it impossible to tell what it is saying).
- Family bell announcements could be identically matched on multiple speakers in the Home, but some features of the Routines can only be done on 1 device (for example, delightful chime).
Family bell saved my sanity during Covid and kept my kindergartener and 3rd grader on top of logging into their asynchronous classes. Since then it has them waking up and getting ready for school and after school activities without parental prompting. It has been a lifesaver and I hate to see it get discontinued. The replacement of Routines is not adequate.
