This week, Google updated the Google app to version 6.3 on Android. This is the app that powers Google Now and a number of other things. It’s a pretty important part of the OS, especially if you use Google services. The update to version 6.3 doesn’t bring much in terms of anything new to the app. In fact, the only real change is the addition of a “Translate” button in the overflow menu. But the update does show us what is coming soon, through the code that is in the APK.
The teardown of the Google app, by Android Police, has shown that the Google Assistant will likely only support two languages when it launches (many believe it’ll come with Android 7.0 Nougat). It appears that it’ll support English and Deutsche at launch. Which is a pretty limited number of languages, but it is likely that more will be coming in the near future. There are also a few more settings located inside the settings section of the app for controlling the Google Assistant and Google Home (Google Home is the Amazon Echo competitor that the company announced at Google I/O and should be coming to stores this Fall).
User-defined actions also showed their face in the update here. Allowing users to create their own triggers within the app. Likely for use with the Google Assistant and Google Home. The strings found in the code aren’t that helpful in determining how these would be used, but it would appear that you should be able to create your own commands and tell the Google Assistant what you want it to reply with. It also appears that there are a few new icons in the app for Google Home hardware. There’s an icon for a “general device” and then another for the Nest Thermostat. So it looks like the Nest Thermostat will get its own icon, while other hardware won’t.
That’s about it for what was found in the app in this teardown. If you haven’t gotten the update to version 6.3, you can download it from the link below. Remember to enable “Unknown Sources” from the Security settings on your device before attempting to sideload the APK.
Download: Google v6.3