Google Assistant comes to the iPad

While limited in terms of functions, if you’ve been waiting for Google Assistant to come to the iPad, your wait is over. Google has finally brought it to the iPad. Some of the things Assistant can do on the iPad include things like dimming the lights, texting or making video calls, setting reminders, or casting to your TV. And since the tablet has a bigger screen, it allows for multitasking with other apps. It also works in both portrait and landscape modes.

Source: The Verge

Indoor Nest Cam IQ gets support for Google Assistant

Nest just updated its indoor Cam IQ security camera to add support for Google Assistant. The move seems in line with Nest being merged into Google’s hardware division fairly recently. However, Nest made the announcement about this feature back in September but thankfully it’s finally here. When you use the usual “OK Google” commands, the Cam IQ’s blue light will shine to let you know it’s listening. It’ll let you do basic web searches, create shopping lists, set reminders, dim the lights, and change the temperature. But you can’t use it to control the Cam IQ itself. You can’t use your voice to turn it on and off just yet. But who knows if Google plans to add this in the future. It must also be noted that this update won’t be coming to the outdoor version of the Cam IQ.

Source: Engadget

Google Assistant update brings music alarms, the ability to look up TV schedules

Google Assistant adds a couple of handy new features into its arsenal. One is the ability to set alarms to music. So if you want some Beyoncé to wake you up in the morning, you can just say “Set an alarm for 6 a.m. that plays Beyoncé” and it’ll play you just that. It’ll work for whatever music service you’ve set Assistant to use as default, so whether that be Spotify, Pandora, or the songs you’ve uploaded to your Google Play Music library. Another is it can now look up TV schedules for you. So you can ask it things like “When is Big Bang Theory on next?” or like which channel airs a particular show.

Source: The Verge

Google might soon let you use custom hotwords to launch Google Assistant

Maurizio Pesce/Flickr

If you don’t quite feel like saying “Hey Google” or “Ok Google” to activate Google Assistant, you might not need to do so in the future. 9to5Google found some code in the latest Google app update that seem to be laying groundwork for being able to use custom hotwords to activate the AI assistant. The code shows how you can create a new custom hotword and teach Google Assistant to recognize it. The original two hotwords will still work even with the new addition. The feature hits Google’s mobile app first it seems but there is no word when it’ll come to Google products like the Home speaker. We’re confident we’ll hear more from Google when this gets official.

Source: Lifehacker