Using Google Assistant Could Soon Get a Lot Easier, Including on Android Auto

It’s all because thanks to Google Assistant, you can reduce driving distractions to a minimum level, all by just using voice commands that let you perform a series of tasks that would otherwise require touch input.

To launch Google Assistant, no matter if you’re in the car or not, you need to turn to the “OK, Google” wake-up phrase, and on Android Auto, this feature has been particularly troublesome, as it sometimes failed to work, thus breaking down the entire experience.

But Google is now trying to reinvent the first interaction with the Assistant by simply giving up on the wake-up phrase, in turn relying on a proximity sensor that would help it determine when you’re close to it. Invoking Google Assistant with this dedicated phrase is required for several reasons, including because of privacy matters, as this way you can be sure that it’s not always listening to you.

So now Google wants to develop a way that would allow Google Assistant to figure out when you are about to interact with it and then launch automatically.

The feature was discovered by YouTuber Jan Boromeusz and is currently being developed for smart displays devices that support Google Assistant. The demo that you can see below is made on a Nest Hub Max, which already comes with features to determine when you’re around, but there’s a chance Google is already exploring options to bring a similar approach elsewhere too.

Certainly, making it easier for users to interact with Google Assistant is good news for drivers too, as such an improvement could help reduce driving distraction even more. If and when Google plans to release this new feature to all users is something that remains to be seen though, as the whole project appears to be in its very early days right now.