How to Get Automatic Call Transcription on Your Pixel Right Now
One of the most handy features for Pixel 2 and Pixel 3 owners, call checking, is getting an important update. By the end of the year, your device will be able to store the call transcripts it generates when handling suspected spam calls (or calls you choose to manually check). And if you don’t want to wait, you can beta test the feature right now.
In the current implementation of automatic call filtering, the Google Assistant can recognize when a call might be robotic or from a potentially suspicious phone number and intercept it on your behalf.
When you answer a call, the Google Assistant sends a standard greeting to the other person: “Hi, the person you are calling is using Google’s verification service and will receive a copy of this conversation. Tell me your name and the reason you are calling. “
Then you can watch your device transcribe the entire conversation in real time on your phone. At any time during a call, you can answer it, ask Google Assistant to answer for you with automatic phrases such as “call back later” or “tell me more,” or even block the number and report it as spam.
When a new Google update comes out, your device will save these transcriptions so you can dig them up later. (For those interested, all transcriptions are done locally on the phone, not on Google’s servers, so the company does not collect data on these calls or recordings.)
Google says the saved transcription logs will be available for all Pixel phones between now and early 2019, but you can get this feature sooner by participating in Google’s Phone app beta program . It is enough to press just one button and you are in business. Your Phone app will be updated with new beta versions when available and may include new features or performance changes before the public sees them. (Google notes that it may take some time to receive the update and not necessarily automatically)
Call verification comes with all Pixel 3 phones for now, and this week started rolling out to select Pixel 2 users. Original Pixel and Pixel XL owners can look forward to a call verification update coming in the coming weeks, though again, they could potentially see this sooner by becoming a beta tester of the Phone app.
If you experience bugs, crashes, or other problems and you no longer want to participate in beta testing, you can opt out of the beta program by uninstalling the Phone app:
- Press and hold the Phone app icon to open the app’s quick settings, then tap the “i” icon in the upper-left corner of the tiny menu to open its settings.
- In the upper left corner of the settings menu, tap the three folded dots, then tap Uninstall Updates. Click “Yes” when asked if you want to restore the application to factory settings.
- Download and install the current public version from Google Play .