In recent days, the Google Assistant UI has started to change again on the Pixel series smartphones, but this graphic restyling looks like a throwback and could reflect a different vision of Big G of the positioning of the virtual assistant within the user experience.
At the time of the debut of the Google Pixel 4 series, Google Assistant had undergone a profound renewal, with the main innovations identifiable in greater speed – the result of largely local processing of commands – and in a new UI.
The Mountain View company had opted for a semi-transparent user interface – with the usual prompt Hi, how can I help you? And the commands for text input and Snapshot -, as if to reflect the positioning of Google Assistant in the background.
This UI started disappearing over the past weekend in favor of a compact window, white or gray depending on the light or dark theme active on the smartphone. The Google Assistant logo is monochrome and placed in a central position, just above the usual question; the key for text input of commands has remained where it was.
This new UI occupies approximately the same space as the previous one, however, not being transparent, it does not allow you to see the icons of the dock or that portion of the background. Although the graphic setting is changing, the functional one remains the same: Google Assistant is still on-device and in fact, some commands (for example, turn on/off the flashlight) work even in the absence of an internet connection.
The new UI has been spotted on Pixel smartphones with both Android 11 and Android 12, in both cases having installed the latest version of the Google app (beta). Big G had already removed the transparent UI in 2020, but this time the change seems to be made to stay. Incidentally, this UI is also more in line with the look of Google Assistant on other Android devices.
