There's finally a way to summon Google Assistant on your iPhone using your voice

• The latest version of Google Assistant for iOS lets you summon Google Assistant via Siri.
• You have to say "Hey Siri, OK Google" to open Google Assistant. Then say "OK Google" again to use your voice with Google Assistant.
• It's an imperfect workaround, but it helps break down the barrier that Apple built around its ecosystem — before now, there wasn't a way to open Google Assistant using your voice on iOS.

Up until Wednesday, the only voice assistant you could summon and control with your voice on Apple's devices was Siri, but that's now changed with the latest version of Google Assistant for iOS.

In the latest update, you can now add Google Assistant's "OK Google" summoning phrase — or your own custom phrase — to Siri. That means you can summon Siri and ask it to summon Google Assistant using your voice.

It goes like this: "Hey Siri, OK Google." Siri will then open the Google Assistant app, at which point you have to say "OK Google" again to start asking questions or issuing commands to Google Assistant. It's not perfect and it feels a bit like a workaround rather than an actual feature, as you have to say three phrases to get to Google Assistant versus the single phrase for Siri or Google Assistant on Android devices.

To get this to work, you'll need to update to the latest version of Google Assistant via the iOS App Store. You might get prompted to "Add Google Assistant to Siri," in which case you tap "Add to Siri" and add the Google Assistant summoning phrase of your choice. Otherwise, you'll need to go to Siri's settings in iOS and tap "Add OK Google to Siri" manually.

In the past, in order to summon Google Assistant on iOS devices using your voice, you needed to open the Google Assistant app or tap a shortcut on the widgets screen.

This is incredibly useful for anyone who uses iOS devices and Google devices. It's incredibly useful even if you don't own Google devices, as you can now use Google Assistant as your main voice-activated assistant instead of Siri. In general, this workaround to access Google Assistant with your voice helps break down the wall that Apple builds around its products and ecosystem, and gives iOS users more access to things that aren't Apple.

Overall, Google Assistant is smarter and more useful than Siri. It's more capable in almost every single way. Funnily enough, the most useful thing that Siri now does is to summon Google Assistant — without Siri, there would still be no way to summon Google Assistant with your voice.

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Contributer : Tech Insider https://ift.tt/2KqXcso

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