Google Assistant Being Prepared For Other Chromebooks

You can’t use Google Assistant on a Chromebook unless you spend a lot of money on Google’s Pixelbook. The company launched this premium Chromebook last year and aside from the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL, it was one of the few devices with native Google Assistant integration. It appears that the company is now preparing Assistant for Chromebooks other than the Pixelbook.

Google has gradually been expanding Assistant to more devices and it’s now available on third-party speakers, smart displays, older Android handsets, and more. It’s only a matter of time before other Chromebooks get it as well.

New commits have been spotted in the Chromium Gerrit which reveal that Google is preparing Assistant for other Chromebooks. The text description for the commit reads “add Assistant feature flags changes accordingly” and “Assistant service provides core Google Assistant functionality.”

This suggests that Google Assistant will be disabled by default on devices other than the Pixelbook. It will be up to the OEMs to decide whether or not they want Assistant on their Chrome OS-powered hardware.

They don’t need to do anything to keep the feature disabled but if they decide to enable it, an additional setting will become available to allow or prevent Chromebooks from listening for the hotwords like “Hey, Google” and “Ok, Google.” OEMs will also be able to decide whether they want Assistant to pop up only after a certain button is pressed.

This is good news for Chromebook fans as there’s a solid chance now that devices other than the Pixelbook will get Assistant, but it’s unclear how long they’ll have to wait before that happens.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Computers
Tags: chrome os, Chromebooks, Google, Google Assistant, pixelbook