Google will soon make it possible to assign tasks to the Google Assistant without having to arouse its attention with the Hey Google statement. That may soon work for a specific set of commands, which has been discovered in the code of the Google Assistant.
It was already known that we might soon be able to stop yelling Hey Google all the time before we tell the Assistant. Soon we’ll just start talking, and Google itself will know we’re talking to him or her. It also becomes more concrete, because 9To5Google has already discovered the feature in the code of the Google Assistant. The project is called ‘Guacamole’ at Google, only the function is no longer called Voice shortcuts, but Quick phrases.
In the screenshots, we see that Google uses code words to hide the functioning of the function as best as possible. Hence the strange words. However, we can deduce that you can choose from a specific list of commands for which you can omit “Hey Google”. All of these actions require you to add the Quick phrase so that the Assistant recognizes them as well. Of course, you should only add sentences that you do not just use for other things in everyday life. Otherwise, you will soon be saddled with a very confused smart speaker.
All the Quick Phrases you can use are divided into categories, and there are Quick Phrases for many different purposes:
- Set alarms: “Set an alarm for 7 a.m.”
- Cancel alarms: “Cancel the alarm”
- Show alarms: “What time is my alarm set for?”
- Send broadcasts: “Send a broadcast”
- Respond to calls: “Answer” & “Decline”
- Ask about time: “What time is it?”
- Ask about weather: “What’s the weather?”
- Turn lights on & off: “Turn the lights on”
- Turn lights up & down: “Increase the brightness”
- Control volume: “Turn up the volume”
- Pause & resume music: “Pause the music”
- Skip tracks: “Skip this song”
- Set timers: “Set a timer for 2 minutes”
- Cancel timers: “Cancel the timer”
- Pause & resume timers: “Pause the timer”
- Reset timers: “Reset the timer”
- Show timers: “How much time is left?”
- Reminders: “Create a reminder”
- Family notes: “Create a family note”
It is expected that Quick phrases will work on smartphones, as well as on smart speakers and smart displays. However, there is still a lot of uncertainty. It is not yet known whether this feature will actually be rolled out and when that will be the case.
Furthermore, it is of course still the question of whether it will immediately work in Dutch. Presumably, this will not be the case from the very first moment, precisely because the function is so experimental and strongly linked to language.
