Top 10 Google Assistant tricks that are worth trying out to streamline your work and personal life

We all are quite familiar with virtual digital assistants by Google, Siri by Apple, Cortana by Microsoft, etc. From asking silly questions to setting reminders and see weather or traffic, the digital assistants can cater to a lot of things that we need, replacing the usual way of carrying out the manual efforts to get the same job done. But most people, perhaps you, might not know about some cool tricks on Google Assistant, which is one of the best and most used digital assistants available out there for its availability on Android devices. Besides asking Google Assistant to remind you about something at some time, or asking it to play a song that you like, the other cool tricks on Google Assistant are worth trying out.

Most of the Google Assistant tricks I will talk about here are also available for Google Home devices, as well. However, there are obvious limitations on it, as the Google Home doesn’t come with a display. You can thus, try your luck out, by trying out some of the tricks I will talk about here, on your Google Home, if you have one. In the list, I will not keep the most usual ones like, how you can see the traffic on your route, or how to check the weather or the way to set a reminder. But I will talk about some cool tricks that can be useful in your day to day usage and most people don’t use or know about them.

So, without any further delay, let’s get started with the top 10 cool tricks to try out with your google assistant.

Remind Google about where you kept your belongings

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How often do you forget where you kept your keys or some other unused gadget, perhaps a few days ago! It is quite normal to forget things, as our brain is after all not a hard drive to organize every single thing. But, you can ask Google Assistant to remember, where you keep things like keys, wallets, or anything else. Just call your Google Assistant and say ‘Remember I kept my wallet in the drawer’.

Next time, when you want to know, where exactly you kept your wallet, just call the assistant, and say ‘Hey where is my wallet’. Google Assistant will then come with the answer. This is a really useful feature you can use on Google Assistant and can come in handy if you frequently forget where you keep your belongings. You should, however, have the expertise to use this feature effectively, as if you misplace the things, and don’t update Google with the same, it is not Google’s responsibility. You can even ask Google to forget anything at any time, whenever necessary. 

Ask Google about the song that is playing

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Are you somewhere out of your home, and a melodious tune is playing around you? I know, you might feel awkward to ask what song or music it is, from people around you, or the one, who is playing the song. But Google can come to your rescue. Just call your assistant and say ‘What song is this?’ Google will immediately search for the music, and will shortly come with the necessary details of the song including the artist, composer, and other relevant information available with Google about the song or album.

In the above screenshot, you can even find the direct link to the song on YouTube, and other major music streaming services, which can be equally handy, as well. You can follow this tutorial to find out, how you can add a one-tap widget to your home screen that will do the same thing if you are in a noisy environment and don’t want to communicate with Google Assistant through voice in that situation.

Play games on Google

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Playing games can be the best time pass, not to mention, most multiplayer or heavy games are not worth playing while commuting, or during short breaks at work. But hey, Google Assistant is at your rescue. Just call the Google Assistant and say, ‘Let’s play a game’, and you will find a handful of games to try. Akinator is my personal favourite that will guess the name of the celebrity or star you are guessing.

There are a number of other cool games, which you can try out, and they can be great if you are stuck at traffic, or want to improve your knowledge. From time to time, new games are also added for you to try out and trust me, you will start loving the games that are available. The ability to play games is one of the coolest tricks that are available through Google Assistant.

Unlock the ability of Google Lens

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Just like Google Assistant, Google Lens is yet another great product by Google that you can count on. If you don’t know about Google Lens, it can extract information from still photos or images and can be useful in several circumstances in everyday situations. You can use Google Lens to extract text from photos, copy them, and use it somewhere, translate texts to an understandable language in real-time, scan QR codes, and do a lot more.

You can actually access Google Lens right from Assistant by tapping on the Google Lens icon, or simply say, ‘Open Google Lens’, after calling Google Assistant. After Google Lens is opened, simply point your smartphone camera to some text or information available in front of you, and leave the rest to Assistant. You can even use Google Lens to know, what a product is, or find a similar product online, if you like something at a retail store, or in your friend’s house.

Location-based reminders

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We all set reminders, lest we forget some important things in life. But location-based reminders are different from traditional reminders, which we set to remind us about something at a certain time of the day. We often need to get reminded about things when we reach the office or at a certain location. That’s when location-based reminders come to play. With location-based reminders, you can ask Google Assistant to remind you about things at a certain location, instead of the time on someday.

Just call Google Assistant, and say ‘Remind me to do this and this, when I am at this location’. After you set the location, you can make the location more precise on Google Maps so that you don’t get the reminder, when you are at some inappropriate location, different from where you are supposed to be reminded. However, if you say the name of a building, office, hospital, railway station or airport, you will not need to be more precise on the maps.

Do translations

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If you are communicating with a friend, colleague or client, who doesn’t understand your language, you can call Google Assistant, and ask it to translate what you are saying. For example, you can simply say ‘Translate Today’s weather is good to Hindi’, and Google Assistant will come with the translated results.

Depending upon the languages installed, Google Assistant might play the sentence directly in the language you want along with the text, or only the text will be displayed to you, which applies for most Indian languages. Even if you just get the translation in text, that can equally be useful to communicate with somebody who doesn’t understand your native language, English or any other language.

Get random numbers: flip a coin, roll a die

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I really don’t find any logic behind persons making decisions by flipping a coin, but there are situations, when you indeed need to flip a coin, or roll a die, maybe during a friendly cricket match, if you have gone completely cashless or while playing snake & ladder. Sometimes, you also need to get a random number, and Google Assistant can help you in all such trivial cases.

Just call Google Assistant and say ‘Flip a coin’, ‘Roll a die’ or ‘Give me a random number’, and Google Assistant will instantly do it for you. This is something really cool, Google Assistant can do, and I am sure you can find it handy in a number of situations in your everyday life. Alongside the three options, you can even get other options to get random values, This feature is really useful on Google Assistant, to say the least.

Add items to shopping list

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Do you want to go shopping, and got to purchase a number of things! Google Assistant is at your rescue. Instead of writing the items down or struggling to remember the items, just ask Google to add the necessary items to the shopping list to see them later on, when you actually go out for shopping. Just call Google Assistant and say ‘Add this to the shopping list’.

Later on, just call the Google Assistant and say ‘What’s in my shopping list?’, and the list will be in front of you. After you purchase some items on the list or want to cancel our certain items, just swipe the item left or right and the items will be gone from your list. The ability to add items to the shopping list this way is really helpful when you often forget to purchase certain items every single time.

Show photos of my cats

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I don’t want to be mean with dog people actually. But if you want to see the photos of your pets anywhere or anytime, you can call Google Assistant and say ‘Show me photos of my cats’ or ‘Show me the pics I took in Mumbai’ or anything else, and all the photos uploaded to Google Photos will be displayed to you, as per what you have asked.

If you have photos containing persons, and you have assigned a name to each of them, you can even say ‘Show me photos of X’, and the results within Google Photos will be displayed to you. This can really come in handy, if you don’t want to scroll through the list of photos in Google Photos, and want the appropriate results in just a single step.

Play some elegant sounds

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There are times, when we want to listen to some soothing sounds, like the sound of rain, waves breaking against the sand, thunderstorm, and much more. Such soothing sounds can even fuel your productivity or help you concentrate on studies or in other situations, including in those hours, when you want to sleep.

Just call Google Assistant, and say ‘Play rain sounds’, or something similar to that, and the sounds will be audible to you right away, either on your earphones, Bluetooth speakers or any other device connected to your smartphone or a selected audio device. There are Chrome extensions and websites, where you can get similar functionalities, but why go there when you can get the same on Google Assistant with just a call.

Google Assistant will keep adding more features in the near future, and it could even make calls on your behalf to book restaurants, and for a number of other purposes. However, the features that are currently available, and the tricks that are available on the present-day shouldn’t disappoint you in any way.

So those were the top 10 Google Assistant tricks that you should try and make your life easier and more productive. Do you have any questions? Feel free to comment on the same below.

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