Google Assistant

Google announced in October that the Assistant light mode is gone on Android phones and tablets, and reiterated today that “Assistant Uses Dark Mode By Default.”

Back in September, Google confirmed our Insight that Google Tasks would replace Assistant Reminders in the “coming months.” We’re still waiting for this to launch five months later, but work is ongoing.

In the coming months and years, Google will add AI-powered capabilities to its core apps that meaningfully change the experience. This initial wave of additions will share some similarities, and it will be interesting to see how the company brands them. Google will have a number of options, but Assistant seems fairly obvious for these AI features.

The Polestar 2 is now able to access voice controls from your Google Assistant-powered devices including the Nest Hub, Nest Audio, and many more.

There are plenty of useful commands to use on Google Assistant devices, with everything from setting timers to launching music. But for many lately, Google Assistant sleep timers for stopping music have been broken on devices such as the Nest Hub.

There’s a growing number of Android Auto users who have noticed that Google Assistant is at least partially broken following the update to Android 13.

Voice assistants have been getting a bit less attention over the past year compared to previous years, but it’s always fun to take a look at how they all compare with how we actually use them. To no one’s surprise, Google Assistant took the crown in a recent comparison, but it really shows the gap Assistant has over Siri, Bixby, and especially Amazon Alexa.

Back in June, Google announced that third-party Assistant voice apps and Nest Hub games would be going away in 2023. Third-party developers, like Todoist, are starting to shut down their broader integration and go Android-only.

The height of — what I deemed — an Assistant takeover was when “Google Assistant” got listed after Android in the “Operating System” section of the Pixel 3’s tech specs. A few years later, things have changed and the clear trend for Google Assistant in 2022 is one of retreat. 

Given that kids like to use Assistant, Google is rolling out new parental controls, as well as new kid-friendly voices and Kids Dictionary.

As the Google Home ramps up preview testing for its big redesign, Google is making more tweaks to the UI, but also apparently breaking existing Assistant routines for some users.

Google is significantly upgrading Assistant’s podcast capabilities with more granular commands that let you search and play by episode, topic, and even guests.

Google Assistant is using on-device “Personalized speech recognition” on the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro to get “better at recognizing your unique speaking style, words, and phrases.”

If you’re not using dark mode on your Android device, you might notice that Google Assistant is using a dark theme regardless, and Google says that’s intentional.

With recent updates to the Google Search app, Google has been steadily preparing redesigns of Discover and the Assistant for the Pixel Tablet.

Over the past day, several Pixel Buds Pro owners have found that “Hey Google” has been disabled and that their Assistant headphones no longer pick up the hands-free hotword.

Ahead of its larger redesign heading out to the general public, the Google Home app is doing some work with routines, adding a new “Household” option for routines as well as expanding device triggers to more users.