How to Customize Google Assistant Shortcuts for Your Android Apps
It’s great that Google Assistant now works with some third-party apps. And by “works with,” I mean you can now issue multiple commands to the Android digital assistant to invoke various functions in some of the platform’s best apps. This is the limited debut of a feature that should have gained widespread popularity many years ago.
However, productivity is productivity. Assuming the rollout of the feature amazed you – make sure you update your Android to the latest OS, as well as all the apps on the Google Play store (it never hurts) – some of the most popular Android apps can now be customized via shortcuts.
What applications? I’m glad you asked. There is currently no finite list, so let’s just assume we’re talking about apps that are used by millions of people and have been around for many, many years. Home-named applications such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Gmail.
Fortunately, there is one simple trick you can use to see both applications that support those shortcuts, what the keyboard shortcuts are, and what voice commands will need to be spoken to activate them. Just squeeze your phone and launch Google Assistant (or whatever, you will launch it) and say “My Shortcuts”. When you do this, you will be taken to a screen that looks like this:
Scroll down a bit and you will see the “All Shortcuts for Your Applications” section . “ This is a gold mine. Tap on any app and you’ll see a short list of actions you can call with Google Assistant. For example, here’s a portion of the Twitter list:
Tap the plus sign next to any shortcuts you want to activate, and then you’ll find them under Your Shortcuts in the list of each app. Click on the pencil icon next to any of these shortcuts to customize your trigger phrase the way you want:
Since you have new trigger phrases to trigger actions in apps, you can even associate them with a Google program if, say, you need to immediately trigger a tweet every day as part of your morning wake-up process. (I really hope this is not the case.)