It is now possible to reply to a new message on WhatsApp or Telegram without even picking up your phone.
What you need to know
- Google Assistant can now read your messages from popular third-party apps such as WhatsApp and Telegram.
- Assistant will read aloud all your latest messages when you say “read my messages”.
- The feature hasn’t been rolled out to everyone yet.
You can now use the Google Assistant to both read and reply to messages from third-party messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, GroupMe, Slack, and more. Until now, the Assistant could only read and reply to SMS messages.
In order to allow Assistant to read aloud your messages, you will need to use the “read my messages” command. Previously, when you told Google Assistant “read my messages”, it only read out your SMS messages.
Now, however, Assistant will read out your incoming messages from not just the default Android SMS messages app, but also all compatible third-party messaging apps. The feature requires notification access to be granted to the Google app, so make sure you allow access in case you haven’t granted it already.
Google Assistant will then display a card with the last message that you received and begin reading it aloud. It will also tell you the name of the app on which the message was received. After Assistant is done reading out the message, it is marked as read and you are given the option to dictate a reply.
With that said, the feature does not currently support playing back messages that contain an audio or video attachment. For example, when you receive a message with an audio attachment, Assistant will simply say, “the message just contains an audio attachment.”
According to the folks over at Android Police, the feature has already started rolling out, although it isn’t available for everyone just yet.
Google Assistant routines are my digital nanny
