Whether you’re cruising through your favourite series or across the great open road, Google’s Assistant will soon be able to help you out with its voice commands.
The company announced that Assistant support has begun rolling out to Android TV and Android Auto in Australia from this week, so expect to see both apps update with voice support in the coming days – whether it’s in your car, on your Android smartphone, or on your TV.
Android Auto is an app designed to work with both smartphones and select models of cars with integrated touch displays, and offers up a vastly simplified version of the OS with all of its core driving-relevant features (music, maps, and so on) intact.
Assistant’s voice commands will be able to help you with such functions as navigating via Google Maps, sending voice-to-text messages, playing certain songs or playlists via Spotify, and more.
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For compatible tellies or media players running the Android TV OS, the addition of Assistant voice control will mean you’ll be able to issue a number of commands to play you your favourite shows, search for something to watch, keep up to date with the news, change the volume, or even turn the devices off.
According to Google, “With Netflix, Stan and YouTube, you can instantly watch something by asking for it by name, or, if you aren’t sure what to watch, try “show me movies about climbing Mount Everest.” You can also ask your Assistant to “play some music” or listen to a specific song on YouTube Music, Google Play Music, Spotify or Pandora.”
Google’s official blog post states that Assistant has already landed on Nvidia Shield TV, and will come to Sony Bravia, TCL and Kogan TVs in the next month or so.
