42 methods Google Assistant could make you extra environment friendly on Android
Google Assistant has some genuinely helpful productiveness instruments for professionals — and it is as much as you to discover ways to use them.
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Google Assistant is synthetic intelligence at your fingertips, particularly on Android — however generally, it may be powerful to know what to ask an omniscient robotic to do.
I’m right here to assist. I’ve talked to my Android cellphone greater than I’d care to confess (even earlier than it did something in response — boy, had been these awkward occasions), and I’ve put collectively the last word information to Google Assistant’s most helpful productivity-oriented prospects.
So clear your throat, seize your favourite Android gadget, and prepare to make that silky-voiced digital companion of yours extra useful than ever.
Google Assistant is natively obtainable on any moderately present Android cellphone. So lengthy as you’ve got enabled Voice Match in your system settings (and you may seek for the phrase “Voice Match” inside your settings in case you aren’t certain), you possibly can entry it anytime just by saying Hey, Google whereas your cellphone is in earshot.
Depending in your gadget and Android model, you may additionally be capable of summon Assistant by sliding your finger up diagonally from both of your display screen’s decrease corners or by urgent and holding your Home button, on older Android gadgets. You also can create an everyday residence display screen shortcut to Assistant by downloading the standalone Assistant app, which is basically simply an easy-access icon for the service that is already there and ready.
Agenda and routines
1. Peek at your agenda for any day by asking Assistant variations on these questions:
- When’s my subsequent appointment?
- Show me my appointments for Tuesday afternoon.
- What’s on my calendar for subsequent Monday?
- What/when/the place is my subsequent occasion?
- What’s my first occasion tomorrow?
- When’s my subsequent haircut appointment?
2. Create new calendar occasions on the fly by telling Assistant add to my calendar or make an appointment adopted by the occasion’s title, date, time, and optionally even location. For occasion, you can say one thing like Add to my calendar, venture assembly on June twelfth at 11 a.m. — or Make an appointment for a lunch assembly with Bipsy and Blerp Friday at midday at Del Taco.
3. Get a broader overview of your day by activating Assistant and saying good morning. That’ll trigger your Assistant to offer you a abstract of the climate to your present space together with a rundown of any reminders and appointments in your agenda — and, if you’d like, an summary of your commute and a fast audio broadcast of the information from no matter sources you favor. You may even have Assistant routinely take your cellphone off silent, set your cellphone’s media quantity to a particular degree, and modify any linked gadgets in your house or workplace as a part of the method.
To configure all the choices, hearth up Assistant and say Assistant routines, then faucet the gear-shaped icon subsequent to the phrase “Routines” and faucet the road labeled “Good morning.”
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You can edit Assistant’s morning routine to incorporate all types of various on-demand actions and changes.
4. In that very same part of the Assistant settings, you possibly can configure separate routines that happen everytime you utter any phrases you need — and even at particular set occasions of day or the second you dismiss sure preset alarms within the morning. You may even create day-long Assistant routines that comprise a number of actions at a number of occasions.
5. Be certain to look, too, for the preset routines for “Commuting to work” and “Commuting residence.” Provided you are commuting into an precise outside-of-the-home office nowadays, these are useful locations to arrange processes during which Assistant can do issues like replace you on the visitors or your agenda; set your cellphone’s media quantity to a sure degree and play music, information, or a podcast; ship a predefined message to a particular individual or learn your unread texts aloud; and even broadcast a message (like “On my means residence” or “Arriving on the workplace in 20 minutes”) to any Assistant-enabled audio system in your house or workplace as quickly as you point out you are en route.
Reminders and notes
6. One of Assistant’s most helpful instruments is its capacity to take and handle context-sensitive reminders. You can set a reminder for a particular time and day — Remind me to name Schmitty Friday at midday, for example — or you possibly can create a reminder that’ll seem while you arrive at a specific location: Remind me to order extra turnips after I get to work, Remind me to examine on the turnip-ordering progress when I’m on the Chicago airport, Remind me to say the shopper’s turnip-caused rash after I get to Red Robin, and so forth.
7. You can set reminders with basic places, too — corresponding to Remind me to select up ointment on the grocery or Remind me that Gladys desires an Egg McMuffin after I get to McDonald’s — and Assistant will ship the message the subsequent time you arrive at a related place.
8. Got one thing you could keep in mind regularly? Ask Assistant to create recurring reminders for you. Just add the phrase each into your command — as in: Remind me to examine the printers each Tuesday at 3, Remind me to the touch base with Stu on the primary day of each month, or Remind me to purchase the boss some birthday turnips on June 4 yearly. From that second ahead, you will by no means have to fret about forgetting once more.
9. In addition to common reminders, Google Assistant will help you keep in mind random information. Just inform it what you could know — corresponding to Remember that the workplace Wi-Fi password is FreshProsciutto7, Remember that my rental automobile is a crimson Toyota Camry with Florida license plate PE379Q, or Remember that the boss’s husband is an accountant named Morty.
Then, when you could recall the information, simply say, What did I inform you about adopted by the topic — the workplace Wi-Fi password, my rental automobile, or regardless of the case could also be.
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Tell Assistant something in your thoughts, and you may at all times be capable of name that data up while you want it.
10. After an extended and winding highway of awkward limitations, Assistant’s observe to self command now helps you to transcribe a fast memo to your future self in no matter app you favor, as long as the app is put in in your cellphone and suitable with the operate. To choose your most well-liked note-taking supplier, say Assistant settings after which search for the “Notes & lists” possibility on the display screen that comes up. Once you’ve got made your alternative, you possibly can merely say observe to self after which rattle off no matter’s in your thoughts to have a observe saved immediately in no matter app you picked.
Messages and communication
11. The subsequent time you could make a name, let Assistant act as your operator. Just inform it to name any publicly listed enterprise or any individual in your contacts — specifying cellular or work if wanted — after which sit again whereas the digits are dialed. If you are driving and must go utterly hands-free, add on speakerphone to the top of your request.
12. Send a textual content with out lifting a finger by telling Google Assistant textual content adopted by your contact’s title. Assistant will ask to your message and, as soon as you’ve got completed dictating, present it on the display screen and ask if you wish to edit it. If your eyes are on the highway and you may’t look down, you possibly can at all times take your possibilities and say ship it when that second immediate comes up.
13. Need to compensate for textual content messages when your eyes are in any other case occupied? If you are utilizing Google’s personal Messages app on Android, inform Assistant learn my messages. It’ll stroll you thru your most up-to-date texts and provide to allow you to reply to any pending messages through voice on the identical time. You also can specify a contact’s title — Read my messages from Arthur, for example — in case you’re on the lookout for one thing particular.
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Ask Assistant to learn you your messages for a straightforward method to keep in contact with out having to do any touching of your display screen.
14. Assistant makes it straightforward to search out emails inside Gmail as effectively: Just ask it to discover my emails from a specific contact or to discover my emails about a particular topic, and it will pop up tappable outcomes proper inside its interface.
15. You also can ship emails in Gmail through Assistant. Use the next format: Send e mail to [contact name], topic [your subject], message [your message].
Phone features and settings
16. The subsequent time you want a screenshot, skip the standard button-pressing insanity and inform Assistant to take a screenshot. You’ll have a saved picture of your present display screen ready and prepared within the blink of an eye fixed.
17. Listening to some form of (ahem) vital business-related audio within the automobile? Tell Assistant to show the quantity up or down or to set it to a particular degree (set the quantity to 10) or share (set the quantity to 50%). You also can inform Assistant to mute the quantity, in case you simply want some frickin’ peace and quiet.
18. Speaking of silence, you possibly can at all times inform Assistant to flip Do Not Disturb on (or off). The identical instructions will even work from every other Assistant-connected gadget the place you are signed into the identical Google account, if you could shush your cellphone whereas it is not in entrance of you.
19. When an unidentified gremlin hides your cellphone (as a result of everyone knows you’d by no means be so foolish as to misplace it your self), ask every other Assistant-enabled gadget on which your account is linked — a Chromebook, a pill, and even an Assistant-associated speaker or show you’ve got received sitting on the nook of your desk — to discover my cellphone. That’ll trigger the cellphone to ring loudly, irrespective of the place it could be tucked away.
20. Another useful common Assistant command: What’s my cellphone’s battery degree? Ask that of your cellphone or every other Assistant-enabled gadget the place you are signed in, and you may know precisely how your stamina’s holding up with out having to cease no matter else you are doing or carry a single finger.
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Get a quick replace in your cellphone’s battery degree with Assistant’s help.
21. Speaking of avoiding pointless finger-exertion, Google Assistant can get round your Android cellphone for you in a flash. Try telling it to open [any app or website] for a zippy method to zoom anyplace you could go.
22. Your Android-dwelling Assistant may even learn you articles within the Chrome Android app, the Google News app, or the Google app out loud on demand — an ideal means to absorb data on the go. Just summon your ever-available helper and say learn this while you’ve received one thing open in a type of locations.
23. Why swipe and search via your cellphone’s settings when you possibly can merely converse your wishes? Assistant is standing by and able to deal with all types of settings in your Android gadget. Try telling it to flip Wi-Fi on (or off), flip Bluetooth on (or off), flip flashlight on (or off), flip airplane mode on (or off), or flip battery saver mode on (or off) — and even to dim (or brighten) the display screen.
24. You also can ask Assistant to take you to the expanded settings sections for areas like Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, if you could dive just a little deeper and examine on a connection. Just say Wi-Fi settings or Bluetooth settings — or, in case you’re feeling chatty, add Take me to in entrance of these phrases.
25. If you understand you’ve got requested Assistant one thing you do not need it to recollect (and don’t fret: I will not ask for particulars), simply keep in mind the command that wasn’t for you. That’ll trigger Assistant to delete the latest inquiry out of your account-connected historical past.
26. You also can ask Assistant to delete all the things from the final week — or hour, day, and even simply the final 5 minutes — for a broader clearing of your current conversations.
27. Assistant will help you zip over to your account-wide Google search historical past, too. Just say present my Google search historical past, and you’ll flick thru all of the exercise that is been recorded throughout Assistant, YouTube, and different related sources.
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Ask, and ye shall obtain: One fast command will trigger Assistant to load your entire current searches and different exercise from quite a lot of Google companies.
Bonus: If the outcomes frighten or overwhelm you, inform Assistant to make a howling sound. It’ll set an eerily applicable temper.
Location and journey
28. Whether you are genuinely misplaced or simply pondering your existential nature, strive firing up Assistant and saying: Where am I? That’ll enable Assistant to faucet into your cellphone’s GPS and offer you a tappable map of your exact present location.
29. If you are attempting to satisfy up with another person, ask Assistant to share my location. That’ll enable you to quickly grant anybody else entry to your present whereabouts, whilst you progress round, and navigate to that exact same spot.
30. Provided you will have the suitable apps put in, you possibly can ask your pleasant digital genie to hail you a journey with Lyft, Uber, or different related ride-sharing companies. Just inform Assistant to order me a Lyft (or no matter service you are utilizing) or ask it to ebook a automobile to a particular vacation spot to get the wheels a-rollin’.
31. Let Assistant offer you a heads-up on visitors earlier than you head out for the day. Just ask: What’s the visitors like on the way in which to work? (offered you’ve got set your work deal with inside the Google Maps app) — or How lengthy will it take to get to any particular enterprise title or deal with. And, in fact, you possibly can at all times inform Assistant to offer you instructions or navigate (by automobile, foot, or public transit) to anyplace you want as effectively.
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Let Assistant enable you to estimate journey occasions — by automobile, public transit, and even your personal two ft.
32. Traveling for work? Or choosing up an out-of-town interviewee? Assistant may give you recent flight data for any airline. Just ask: When does [the airline name and flight number] arrive? — or Is [the airline name and the flight number] on time?