One of the features that Google introduced to Android Pie are a set of tools called Digital Wellbeing. Basically the idea is to help users get off their devices and spend less time on them to help curb addiction. This is done by reminders, notifications, timers and more. Now it looks like Google could be looking to expand its Digital Wellbeing initiative to its other products.
In a report from 9to5Google, they have discovered in an APK teardown of the Google app on Android is that it appears that the company could be looking to bring some of those features to Google Assistant. This was discovered in design changes made to Assistant settings where “Family Tools” has since been renamed to “Digital Wellbeing”, and the “Family mode” feature being replaced with a “Filter” feature.
There is also mention of a “Downtime” feature which they speculate could be a retooled version of “Wind Down”, where certain features on Google Assistant can be blocked from being used at specific times of the day. We’re not sure how exactly Digital Wellbeing could be incorporated into Google Assistant, but maybe it could be where Google Assistant could actively remind users to take breaks, or that they might be spending too much time on a particular app, and so on. Either way we’ll have to wait for it to be rolled out in full to get a better idea of what to expect.
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