With Gemini for Pixel Buds, spoken notifications are only for messaging apps

With Gemini rolling out to all Pixel Buds, one thing you should be aware of is that spoken notifications cannot be enabled for every app.

Gemini’s “Announced notifications on headphones” feature currently only supports messaging apps, including:

• Google Chat
• Google Messages
• Google Voice
• WhatsApp 
• Instagram
• Messenger

In comparison, Google Assistant on Pixel Buds let you “hear incoming notifications” from any application, which was useful for calendar events, reminders, and news alerts.

This was an intentional change as Google is “reworking the notifications experience from the ground up,” starting with “streamlined spoken notifications focused on messages.”

Assistant vs. Gemini

Looking ahead, Google told us it will “continue to build on this and are deeply excited about the many different ways Gemini can enhance your overall notification experience for messaging and non-messaging apps when using Pixel Buds.” Using LLMs to summarize notifications would be quite promising.

However, for most Pixel Buds users today, Gemini will be a regression. It follows Google removing the touch-and-hold gesture for alerts and replacing it with “Hey Google, do I have any notifications.”

You can go back to using Google Assistant on your Pixel Buds, but you also have to turn off Gemini as the phone assistant. Previously, it was possible to use Gemini and Assistant side-by-side. 

Another thing Pixel Buds (Pro and A-Series) owners that make the switch should know is how invoking Gemini (not Live) on your buds will always turn on your phone’s screen. The company told us that it’s optimizing for how users prefer to have longer conversations with Gemini by showing the transcript. However, Google has “taken steps to reduce the likelihood of accidental touches by excluding certain functions when the screen is activated by Gemini voice commands.”