Google Assistant will soon respond to whatever you want to call it

You’ll soon be able to get Google Assistant to respond to a custom ‘wake word’. That’s the phrase you use to activate the voice assistant. 

Up until recently, your options have been ‘Okay Google’ or ‘Okay Google’. Google then added ‘Hey Google’ for those users that wanted something a bit more informal, but now it looks like you’re going to be able to use anything you’d like.

This is going to come as a relief for anyone who would rather not call out the name of a major corporation every time they want a traffic update. 

Training your Google Home

The revelation comes as 9to5google did a complete teardown of the latest app update, and found the following code:

That ‘”%1$s’ is a placeholder for whatever you’d like to use as the command. 

It will be interesting to see if Google competitor Amazon follows suit. You can currently make an Echo device respond to ‘Amazon’, ‘Computer’, and ‘Echo’, but the most common is the name Alexa which has caused no end of problems for the human Alexas of the world. 

Also included in the update is code that allows Google devices to make and receive Google Duo video calls. This will be most useful for the new range of Google Assistant smart speakers with screens that were shown off at CES. 

• Want to see what we think of the Google Home smart speaker? Check out our full review.

Via The Ambient