Tag: Google Assistant

It has taken a long time – longer than most wanted frankly – but multiple calendar support has finally arrived on Google Home.  A cloud-side update is currently rolling out to the app that will allow you to have multiple calendars associated with Google Home and thus, you will be able to create events or get calendar information from Google Assistant.

The new feature is found in More Settings>Calendar in the Home app and you will have the ability to add or remove your calendars that you have associated with Home.  Further, you have the ability to set which calendar is your default calendar.  This is important as when you create an event through Google Assistant on Home, it will go to your default (unless you specify the calendar in the command).

Good news today for those who live in Singapore and have Singapore English as their language on their Android phones.  Google Assistant now supports you!  The addition of Singapore English comes on the heals of Spanish and Italian being added a few weeks back and while the roll out of language support has been slow, at least some progress is being made.

For those of you who have Singapore English as your default language on your phone, there isn’t anything you need to do.  If you have Google Now on Tap, you will automatically be moved over to Assistant once it rolls out to your account.  You’ll know you have it when you long press the Home button on your phone and you get Assistant instead of Google Now on Tap.  This should work on any Android phone running Lollipop or later.

The number of services that have come to Google Assistant has grown exponentially in 2017 but really over the course of the last few months.  Dozens of new services have come to the digital assistant and one of the newest is HP.

When you link your Google Cloud Print enabled HP printer to Google Assistant, you will be able to have it print things for you without having to touch your phone or PC.  Admittedly, the service is somewhat limited now but you get a great idea of what can be done in the future.

First, you have to have an HP printer that works with Google Cloud Print natively.  The vast majority of their printers that have WiFi functionality do but double-check yours.  I have an OfficeJet Pro 8650 and it works with no problem.  Next, you will need to setup Google Assistant to link with your HP Printer.

For those of you who use Google Assistant on your iPhone, you can now have it play music from your Apple Music account.  Just like other music services, you can link your Apple Music account via a toggle switch in the Music section of the Settings for Assistant.  Once linked, you can use Assistant to play music from the service by saying, “Play Rush on Apple Music“.

The functionality of Google Assistant on iOS is somewhat limited as you cannot have it as your default Assistant.  That still is reserved for Siri and is unlikely to change (on Android, you can change the default Assistant app).  That means that the functionality of this new feature is going to require you to fire up Google Assistant and give the command.  In other words, it isn’t as smooth a user experience as Siri… but it is Google Assistant which is documented at being superior Siri in accuracy.

Google has begun the process or rolling out a combination app and server-side update that enables the “Hey Google” hot word on Android phones.  Once complete, you can activate Google Assistant by using the trigger just like you can on Google Home.

To this point, the only hot word that Assistant would respond to on your phone has been “OK Google”.  When Google Home was released last year, Assistant on the smart speaker would respond to this too as well as “Hey Google”.  It is unclear why it took so long to get to phones but it is slowing rolling out to users now.

Google has quietly made a background update to Google Assistant that allows you to link your HBO NOW account to it.  That means that you can stream content from the service to your Chromecast devices simply by asking Assistant to do so via your phone or Google Home.

HBO NOW is the stand alone streaming service from the premium movie service.  It is $14.99 per month and is for cable cutters who do not have a cable or satellite subscription.  For those that do have HBO as part of their cable package, the app to stream content on your Android device is HBO GO but that cannot be connected to Google Assistant.