Google Assistant adds ‘Your apps’ settings menu for Android

Abner Li | May 13 2021 - 3:08 pm PT

Back in October, Google made a big push to integrate and let you control Android apps with Assistant. That drive should continue at I/O next week, and ahead of that, there’s a new Google Assistant “Your apps” settings menu.

Available at the very bottom of the Google Assistant settings list, this new menu lets you “manage how your Assistant works with installed apps.” Every app that appears lists two preferences, though the one for Chrome is specifically aware of its status as a browser.

Let your Assistant learn from this app
Get a more personalized experience by allowing your Assistant to access and learn from this app’s usage data.

Let your Assistant choose this app
When you ask for something this app can do, your Assistant can send your request to this app, even if you don’t say the app’s name.

The options are enabled by default for every app that appears here, while Google at the bottom of the list links to the Shortcuts creation page. Besides Chrome, the only other first-party Google app to show up here is Snapseed, which hasn’t been updated in ages.

It’s unclear what the “personalized experience” actually looks like, while the second is slightly more straightforward. This functionality has presumably been enabled since the launch of Shortcuts, and Google is only now giving users this granular option to disable.