Tag: Google Assistant

For the first time in many years, Google will be at CES in Las Vegas this coming week.  It is the first time the company has had any real presence at the massive electronics show since 2015 but it has been a lot longer than that since they have had a booth.  Not only will they have a booth, a massive one in the Central Plaza, but it looks like they are going to be heavily focusing on Google Assistant during the show.

The company made a blog post yesterday, highlighting the growth of Google Assistant and Google home over the course of 2017.  Assistant is now available on 400 million devices and in a doze different countries.  But the takeaway from the post was the last paragraph.

No matter where you are, the Google Assistant is here to help you make the most of 2018. And next week, we have even more things in store for the Assistant at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. If you’re at CES, stop by the Google Assistant Playground (Central Plaza-21) to check out some of our new integrations, devices, and the newest ways you can use your Assistant

It would appear that next week, we are going to see some announcements about Assistant and, potentially, some new hardware.

Google has quietly done a bit of updating to the Google Assistant Partner site as well as pushing an update of integration options to the Google Home app.  The app update is a cloud-side change so as long as you have the latest version, you’ll be able to see the expanded list when you go to add a new device.

The additional partners range from everything from electric car charging, to lights and switches, to sprinkler control systems.  Some of the new integrations on the list aren’t exactly new – some have been in play for a few months – but Google just now got around to updating the official listing to let everyone know about them.

Google Assistant is finally coming to tablets.  The news came from Google today in an announcement that also indicated that the personalized assistant will be coming to phones running Android Lollipop (version 5.x).  To this point, Google Assistant has only been available on phones and only on devices running Android Oreo (v8.x), Android Nougat (v7.x) and Android Marshmallow (v6.x).

The first step in getting Assistant to tablets will be an update on the cloud side from Google and then, likely, an update to Google Play Services.  Once the update rolls out, users will be able to long press the Home button/icon on their phone to active Assistant just as they do on their phone.  It is likely just a matter of users doing the long press of Home until they see the Assistant opt-in page pop up.  It should also be noted that this addition of Assistant to tablets will only be for US English devices.  If you have your tablet set to another language, even an English variant, you will not be getting updated.

When the Google Home Mini was announced back in October, one of the highlighted features of the device were touch controls.  These controls would all you to not only adjust the volume with a touch of either side of the device, but would also allow you to long press to play or pause music amongst other things.  Unfortunately it was discovered that the touch controls could be activated without actually touching them, prompting Google to disable the feature (save the volume up and down side touches) via a software update.

It appears now that Google has sorted out a potential resolution and will soon be re-enabling the touch controls of the Google Home Mini by bringing those to the side touch areas.  There is now a software update available to those in the Home Preview Program which is enabling long presses to pause or play music while short presses of the side buttons will remain volume control.  The top tap control however remains disabled and likely will remain so given it is as much a hardware challenge as it is software.

Google Assistant on Google Home has picked up a nice new feature that allows you to give it two commands at once.  To this point, when you wanted to ask Assistant for something, you had to ask it one command at a time, even if they were associated with each other.  For example, you could ask, “What is the temperature outside?” but you would have to wait until it gave you the temperature information before you could tack on, “Do I need a rain coat?”   Now you can issue those commands as one single command joined with the conjunction “and”.  Now I can ask, “What is the temperature outside and will I need a rain coat?”

Not all commands work this way yet and not everyone is seeing this new functionality.  It is a cloud-side change on Google’s part so it is a matter of it making its way to Google Assistant on your account.

Google Lens, the visual search tool that the company announced this summer at Google I/O is starting to generally roll out to Pixel owners.  The new tool is embedded in Google Assistant and allows you to tap the Lens icon and then by using your phone’s camera, view an object, tap it and identify it.

The good news is that the new feature is rolling out to Google Pixel and Pixel 2 owners globally in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, India, and Singapore but the device’s language must be set to English for the feature to enable and work.  You will also be prompted when Lens comes to your device to give it permission to access your camera.