Google has today taken to making a handful of new and recently attempted changes to the official Assistant Snapshot interface, while also revealing a whole new way to access them. Just say “Hey Google, show me my day” to see your Snapshot, loaded with maps showing temporary details of your calendar, weather, commute and tasks, plus restaurant, podcast and recipe recommendations – all in one go even larger list of potentially useful things.
If you’re not familiar, Snapshot is essentially the successor to the old Google Now feed we all love, built right into Assistant and accessed via that weird-looking “raised square bottom” icon (maybe should it be some sort of inbox?) when you pick up Assistant or launch the Google app.
As usual, some of these changes may already sound familiar, and that’s because we’ve treated them once they’s rolled out. Google likes to test things quietly and silently before they become official. That recent changes, such as the new podcast and music recommendation card, recipe suggestions, calendar events, and weather charts, have been around a bit, but now they’ve made the cut official – not every test does. Some of the other changes we did not see explicitly in the wild were revealed with the kindness of the changers in the Snapshot customization menu that appeared recently. But the “top 5 news” and “write your assignments” cards also look new.
The command “Hey Google, show me my day” to instantly access Snapshot is also news to us. Although it may have worked before, it is difficult to accidentally stumble upon new assistant commands. (At the moment, though, it just seems like activating my morning routine on my Smart Displays.)
Google has also announced that English brands will receive birthday reminders via Snapshot, conveniently linked to notifications so you do not miss them, and with bundled actions including shortcuts to call, send or send a personalized birthday song to people.
Google says more features for Snapshot are coming too, so we’ll keep an eye out for any new testing.
