Leaked Google Assistant update spells the end for “Hey Google”

Using your Google Assistant to control your home may soon become a lot simpler according to leaks, which allege that custom quick phrases are coming to the Google Nest Hub Max.

For the majority of the time, if you want to get your Google Assistant to do something, you must first say its wake word (“Hey Google”) before issuing your command.

Quick phrases do away with the wake word, and once enabled you can instruct Google to “Turn the kitchen lights on” or ask “What’s the weather forecast” without having to utter Hey Google over and over again.

Currently, the feature is available on the Google Pixel 6 and the Google Nest Hub Max, and the feature on the latter could soon be getting an upgrade.

Which phrases can you use?

As spotted by 9to5Google several new quick phrases are coming to the premium smart home device according to its coding including “What time is my alarm set for?”, “Skip this song” and “Create a reminder.” But what’s more interesting is that other lines of currently unused code hint at custom quick phrases.

It’s not yet clear how the feature will work exactly, but Google has already coded in a warning that “there are a few rules to make sure these [quick phrases] work well, and you will be guided if there are any issues.” This suggests that you won’t have completely free reign at creating custom commands, but we’ll have to wait and see how restrictive these guidelines are.

For now, it only looks like custom quick phrases are headed to the Nest Hub Max, but with the regular feature already on the Pixel 6, we’ll hopefully see them on Google’s best phone too. And when it launches we’ll hopefully see custom quick phrases come to the Google Pixel 7 too – which is expected to launch in October.