Google Assistant testing unified notification settings for phones

Even without direct interaction, Assistant does a lot in the background through alerts. Google is now looking to give users a better way to manage Assistant through unified notification settings for phones.

At the moment, Assistant notification settings are primarily located in the Google app’s system Notifications page accessible from App info. There are also “Email updates” in Assistant settings.

Some users (via Android Police) are seeing the latter replaced with a unified “Notifications” page to “Choose which types of notifications you’d like to receive from your Assistant.” Under “Phone,” there are seven categories:

• Help with tasks: Info about your flights, bills, package deliveries, and more from your Gmail or Google Account.
• Tips & tricks: Learn about new ways your Assistant can help you.
• Subscriptions: Will only be sent about topics you choose to follow.
• Reminders: The things you’ve asked your Assistant to remind you about or that have been assigned to you from someone you know.
• Extended Responses: Get more info sent to your phone for things you’ve requested from your Assistant on other devices.
• Feedback: Short surveys to help improve Assistant.
• Actions on Google: Notifications from services you’ve linked to your Assistant.

The ones you’re most likely to interact with fall under the “Help with tasks” category. This includes flight and other travel updates, bill reminders, package deliveries, and event updates. Another class of alerts are “Extended Responses” when you ask for directions on your smart speaker and Google automatically sends the full results to your phone.

These new Google Assistant notification settings are not widely rolled out, and do not appear on any devices we checked today. This will help to control the sprawling service that is Assistant, and joins other work we’ve spotted on a unified settings list for other fundamental capabilities.