Google Assistant on Pixel finally getting text input
Google Assistant is a neat piece of software for quickly finding things using voice, but it looks like it will be supporting text entry soon enough, thanks to an .apk teardown that has revealed new details about the future of Google Assistant.
While the Allo version of Assistant is capable of accepting typed input, the Pixel phone version has only been able to take commands through voice prompt. That appears to be changing, as the new Google app includes a button with a keyboard icon and a box to enter text. The text box includes the phrase “Type something…” just in case you weren’t sure what it’s for.
The teardown also reveals that Google is prepping Google Assistant to work with Android Wear devices soon. We’ve known that Google plans on bringing Assistant to Android Wear since June of last year, but new evidence suggests it’s a priority. A few lines of code suggest Google has been working on the settings for Wear Assistant, with a feature that seems to let users select a different language for their watch compared to their phone.
The teardown also revealed the existence of a new feature called Search gestures, which seems to be a new gesture you can perform to enable a search. Not a lot of details surrounding this, but it does seem as though you’ll be able to specify a certain type of search, either for searching through apps or the entire internet.