Now, you can instruct Google Assistant to give shorter responses
At the recent Pixel 4 event, Google unveiled a completely new avatar of Google Assistant with fancy capabilities. Now, building on this work, the search giant is making the new digital helper even better by offering an option to cut its responses shorter, make it less chatty. Here's all you need to know about the capability.
Assistant has been handling queries with long responses
If you have used Google Assistant, you already know the drill of saying 'Hey Google' and following up with a query/task that Assistant is supposed to handle. It's all pretty neat, but the thing is, every time Assistant handles a task it accompanies it with a verbal confirmation. For instance, for turning off lights, it would say 'Ok, turning off living room lights'.
Now, Google is handling Assistant's long-worded responses
As hearing the same long-worded response for a command that is said multiple times a day can be really annoying, Google is offering an option to make Assistant's responses shorter. The capability would cut down its vocal responses by a little bit but will not affect its ability to perform the tasks that it does normally.
How to enable the option?
In order to enable the feature, launch the new Google Assistant on your Pixel 4, the only device to have the Assistant at the moment, and head over to the explore section. After this, tap on your avatar in the upper-right corner and switch to the Assistant tab on the settings page. Here, go to 'Phone' and change 'Speech output' from 'full' to 'brief'.
However, only some people would get this ability
While the feature is interesting, it is worth noting that only select Pixel 4 units have received this capability. It is being enabled as part of a server-side update, which means the roll-out might take a while to complete. Also, there's no word on when or if the same option would come on phones running the older Google Assistant.
