If you say “Hey Google, Tweet,” the Assistant will open Twitter, but then it’s up to you to press the button to start a new tweet. Twitter with Google Assistant lets you create a new tweet, look at your twitter messages, and create a direct message, but here, too, it’s limited. With the Fitbit app, you can create shortcuts to look up nutrition and exercise stats, but nothing more. So, if you don’t want to say “Hey Google, tweet,” you can set it to say “Hey Google, chirp” if you prefer. If there is a shortcut available, you can edit the command phrase to your liking. Enabling a shortcut is as simple as selecting it. Shortcuts are displayed in a Google Assistant window, and are pre-populated based on what the particular app can do with Google Assistant. For example, using the aforementioned “start a run” command, the Assistant only gave me the options for Adidas Running and Runkeeper. Apps that currently work with shortcuts include Citi, Dunkin, Paypal, Wayfair, Wish, Uber, Yahoo! Mail, Nike Run Club, Spotify, Mint, Fitbit, Walmart, Postmates, Snapchat, and Twitter.Įven within these apps, the things you can create shortcuts for right now is pretty small. So, you can say “Hey Google, start a run” without specifying the app, and your phone will open the app you want and begin a running session.Īt the moment, the ability to add shortcuts is limited to a smaller group of about 30 apps and functions.
The other, and possibly more useful feature Google Assistant has picked up, is the ability to create shortcuts to features in apps, saving you the time of opening an app and selecting the action you want.