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Google is now reportedly rolling out a much wider implementation of its new Assistant. That’s based on recent reports citing its appearance in the Beta channel of the app. That’s accessible by scrolling down on the app’s page on the Google Play Store.
The biggest change with this app’s arrival, of course, is how much better it fits in with Android overall. Particularly with regard to Android’s increasingly compact and UX-friendly design. That’s because this version of Assistant is much lighter in terms of the space it takes up. And that starts from the appearance of Assistant when prompted.
When users hold their home button or otherwise access Google Assistant outside of the primary app, the pop-up no longer takes up as much of the screen. The reduction takes the scale down from around a third of the screen to around a quarter of the UI. The elements appearing on that panel remain unchanged, although the elements are now compacted more closely together.
Similary, when users ask a question, the panel doesn’t go fullscreen. Instead, it leaves a strip at the top.
In either case, the corners of the panel have been rounded off as well, in keeping with Material Design 2.0. Exactly how much space is taken up depends on the question asked.
The new Google Assistant brings more than its slim new physique lets on
Of course, as noted above, everything about the new Google Assistant design is sleeker. So, overall, it just integrates with Android better across the board. But that’s not all this update brings with it. The company has also stacked in a new “Previous activity” button — referred to as “chips” by Google. That takes up a position at the left-hand side of the other chips.
As might be expected, when clicked, that button shows all of a user’s recent commands with the AI. Including links to the activity, in case users want to adjust how that’s saved.
The clickable area surrounding the profile area, leading to deeper assistant controls, is larger too. And so is the Assistant icon and the user’s avatar image.
Those changes, like the resizing, should make the new Google Assistant easier to use — generally speaking. But they should also make it easier for users to manage the Assistant itself and the data associated with that.
You probably still don’t have this one yet
Now, there are other changes associated with the arrival of a brand new AI Assistant. But those don’t appear to be present and accounted for everywhere just yet. For instance, Google is working to incorporate the new Assistant into Gboard. Additionally, the changes reported here aren’t appearing on every device yet either.
So there’s a good chance Google is still chiefly releasing this for testing, even within the context of its release in the beta channel. And any individual user isn’t likely going get this until a wider rollout starts.
