Google Home has been on the market for several months now, but it still feels like an unfinished "beta" product. It's supposed to be the Google Assistant in a box, but it's still missing a ton of functionality compared to Google Assistant on a smartphone. It's also not nearly as functional as its rival, the Amazon Echo. It looks like Google is finally gearing up to fix this situation, with the company recently declaring that "multiple users now supported." Multiple users aren't actually supported yet—but given that the featured just popped up in the app, we'd guess it's coming soon. Google was not immediately available for comment.

Update: Google got back to us, saying "We've seen the reports, and don't have anything to share right now."

Multiple-user support might not sound like a big deal, but the feature should unlock a bunch of other features that Google Home users have been waiting for. Multiuser support also means that user authentication is coming, which will finally let Google Home access your personal Google data.

As a "publicly accessible" device open to anyone in earshot, Google Home is not able to access any personal data. That means it is locked out of a lot of standard voice assistant commands like setting reminders, creating calendar events, or taking notes. If you ask Google Home to do almost anything that requires it to access personal data, it will respond, "I can't do that yet." This is in contrast to the Amazon Echo, which assumes that anyone speaking to the device is a trusted user.

Once multiuser support is activated, Google should finally be ready to turn on all the security-sensitive commands that we know the Google Assistant can do. Android Police spotted the beginnings of multiple user support in the Google Home app last month, which would see multiple users training Google Home to respond to the "OK Google" hotword. Google has had a "trusted voice" setting on phones for some time now. It claims to distinguish individual users' voices, but now Google is apparently ready to roll this feature out to a multiuser device.

The rumor mill is pointing to other improvements to Google Home, too. Phone call support is reportedly on the way, according to the Wall Street Journal, while The Information claims that Google is working on a Google Home and mesh Wi-Fi router combination.

Right now, having a Google Home in your home is a pretty painful experience if you're used to issuing voice commands to your phone. The Google Assistant on a phone will defer to any Google Home in earshot, and Google Home isn't very capable right now. So even if your phone hears you say "OK Google, call my mom," it won't actually make a call—Google Home will wake up and say, "I can't do that." Since Google doesn't seem too keen on intelligently routing these commands to devices that can handle them, heavy Google Assistant users are often better off just muting the Google Home or unplugging it entirely.