You’ll soon be able to activate Google Assistant with power button on Android THE FUTURE IS NOW – The Next Web

You can bring Google Assistant up by saying OK Google or Hey Google wake words. But if youre in a noisy environment, that might notwork well.

To solve that, the firm is working on a new way to invoke the AI Assistant by long-pressing the power button. Sleuths at XDA Developers uncovered this mystery in the latest version of the GoogleAndroid app (12.18.6.29).

The new app has lines of code indicating that this feature might be soon heading to a ton of Android phones:

To talk to your Assistant, touch and hold power button, then releaseLong press power for the Assistant

The report also notes that at the moment, this feature shows up in Pixel 5 under Settings > Apps & Notifications > Assistant with Android 12 developer beta installed. However, its not dependent on Android 12, so it should show up in other phones with this Google App version soon.

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Other phone makers such as Oppo have this customization on their phones, and Samsung uses it to trigger Bixby. Apple has had a long press power button gesture to bring up Siri since the iPhone X. So its nice to see Google include this right into the operating system.

While this functionality will be rolled out to many Android phones, Google is also experimenting with a double back tap gesture to bring up Assistant in Pixel phones with Android 12.

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You'll soon be able to activate Google Assistant with power button on Android THE FUTURE IS NOW - The Next Web