Text messaging can sometimes jeopardize your life and the people around you. There are numerous cases of road accidents that were caused by drivers driving while texting. If you must text while driving, Google Assistant could save your life by allowing you to concentrate on your driving as it reads out your SMS messages. But that has been so, only if you are using Google’s Android Messages on your smartphone. Even then, the experience left a lot to be desired.
Google has silently pushed out an update that will not only improve the experience of Google Assistant reading and listening to your dictation as it replies to your SMS messages. But the capability has been extended beyond just Android Messages. It can also read out text sent to you via other third-party apps such as WhatsApp, Telegram, and Slack among others.
The only weird thing about it is that there has been no official announcement from Google. The news first broke out by publication by Android Police and 91mobile.
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There is no doubt Android users will receive this feature quite warmly, so it beats logic why Google remains so low-key about it. Nonetheless, to use this feature, ensure you are running the latest version of the Google app on your phone.
Then summon the digital assistant by either calling out ‘Okay Google,’ or‘Hey Google’ or pressing the digital assistant button if your phone has it. Pro Tip, tapping and holding on the home button on your Android device will start the Digital Assistant.
Once it is up and running, simply ask it ‘read my messages.’ Google Assistant will then start reading out all of your unread messages, and will proceed to swap to another app once it has finished with one. If you like, you can have it read out the name of the sender and on which app it was sent on.
All messages that have been read out will be removed from the notification center. You can also have Google Assistant reply to your message by dictation.
