This means:
- Downloading or updating the Assistant app now gives you Gemini instead.
- You can switch back to Assistant in the Gemini app settings.
- This might be Google’s first step towards replacing Assistant completely with Gemini.
- Some users are unaware of the switch and see two Gemini apps on their phones.
Overall, this may suggest Google is phasing out Assistant and transitioning users to the newer Gemini AI technology.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
- Open developer options on the phone and turn ADB to ON.
- Connect the PC to the phone with a cable.
- Open terminal.
- Run “adb uninstall --user 0 com.google.android.apps.googleassistant”.
- Enjoy your private life.
Do people use Assistant for more than just reminders, weather, and directions? Lol Just curious because that’s all I use it for.
“set a timer for X minutes” And “set an alarm for X AM” are super helpful
I’ve tried one extra layer of complexity - “Remind me to water the plants when I get home” or something like that. It has no idea what I’m asking it to do despite knowing the “remind me” phrase and knowing where my home is.
It used to work years ago. It’s not a technology problem. They changed their policy around location based reminders. One of the reasons I’m degoogling. I got rid of apple products too when they got rid of Google maps in favour of apple maps. Forcing a poorer product on users shows contempt for users.
Add X to Y list is great for when you run out of something in the kitchen.
or, continue making coffee while asking it to remind you to buy milk instead of either stopping to tap or completely forgetting which are the only possible outcomes
Simple timers, controlling the lights, background music, reminders, and occasionally thing like “how many tablespoons in a pint”.
I don’t ask it for the weather because I don’t want a 30 second lecture on the weather, and it won’t give me “cold now, hot later, might rain between”.
Given that Gemini seem to be unable to give short answers, and it can’t control stuff, it’s missing most of what I require.
Odd I seem to be able to control all my IOT devices no problem so far from Gemini with voice commands over the phone. This includes all smart switches, lights, thermostats, and so on in my house
It seems to function a little quicker in response with the voice commands IMO.
I played with it some more, and it seems like it’s just flaky. I could ask it to turn on the living room lights, and it would, but asking it to turn them off got it to inform me that it can’t interact with the outside world.
So it’s not as bad as it first told me, but it’s still not feature parity, and I’m unlikely to use it if it’s not reliable.
Really? I use the Google Homes and they say “today it’ll be cloudy, with a high of x and a low of y”.
Sometimes it also starts going off about “by the way, if you want a summary of your day, just say ‘good morning’” or some shit like that which is annoying but not quite annoying enough to figure out how to turn off.
It will give concise explanations like that, but say I want to know the weather 71 miles away at the place where my husband works? Or even 20 miles away where I work. I have to ask it to tell me the weather where I am, tell me the weather in “windhaven”, tell me the weather in "Waterdeep"etc. Or I can just pull up Home Assistant and see a card with that information (which used to work on Google Assistant Smart Displays, but doesn’t work on their current pixel tablet). And I even have a routine set up for this, and now I get a bunch of error messages on my phone and so on. So they broke a lot of things that used to work in Google Assistant, and now Gemini can’t even do those things at all.
I’ve only ever activated it by accident (I think it’s double-click the power button on my phone). Never actually used the thing.
I only use it for opening Pocket Cast lol.
BTW if anyone has an alternative for Pocket Casts that is free and multiplatform I’m all ears lol (so far Spotify seems like a good alternative, but I don’t like it as a Podcast replacement app).
I moved to Antennapod then ended up using Audiobookshelf since I was already hosting it for my wife’s audiobooks.
I like how audiobookshelf works and syncs, but their android app needs auto play/queue like the web version has. I’ve been listening to “Robot or Not” and episodes are like 2-8 minutes. Gets real annoying to keep needing to select the next episode. Especially while driving as it’s unsafe. The android auto syncing isn’t great either.
AntennaPod is nicer in that way, but I haven’t found a good web player that syncs with it.
Interesting, what is your complete setup for desktop and mobile? Does sync work well? I mean like starting a podcast in some app and continuing it in another.
I use Antennapod on Android, it syncs with Gpodder (which requires self hosting on Nextcloud) and then there’s plenty of compatible clients over on desktop
Thanks for the recommendation, but oh boy, I would prefer to be away from Nextcloud (I have a Synology NAS with its own stuff which I access through VPN), I barely use it and I swear it breaks each update lol
I’m also not a fan of exposing it as I know I wouldn’t take care of it properly… And I am behind a CGNAT and just shut down my VPS…
I use and like Castbox for podcasts. It’s great, though they have become slightly more aggressive with ads lately.
I’m not crazy into podcasts, but I have no complaints with podcast republic. Although, the other suggestion for audiobookshelf is a solid one
There’s a lot of functionality that a lot of people could like using, but you have to go out of your way to learn about it all.
Gemini is slower to respond to tasks (for now, at least), can’t do all the things assistant can do, and can’t do anything at all without being on data.
yay, more nonsense added to stock android (degoogle now)
After being on Graphene for the past 2 years,I decided to reinstall with no google at all,since my bank app now works without any google services dependencies.
hooray for me,I’m finally free and can profit from multiuser installed sandboxed services in another user profile if needed.
Glad to be out of this downward spiral.
What do you mean exactly by “no google at all”? How do you get rid of it of not using Graphene (I know google pay doesn’t work with that, which is a big showstopper for me). Looking for alternatives :)
sorry,I realized now I didn’t mention what I reinstalled and it’s still Graphene,but with no Google services framework installed. Pure stock Graphene with only their apps.
Since GrapheneOS added eSIM support withput google I’m tempted to try to remove Play Services from my installation. How do you find out which apps require Play Services?
I need a degoogle wiki to all me through all the things I can do to degoogle and what conveniences I might loose and potential workarounds for them. E.g. I spent a few hours getting rid of chrome, but then found out that if I want to use maps from my home screen, I can’t use the search bar and I need another button on my homescreen. Also, apparently I use the images tab on Google often, and ddg doesn’t have an images filter.
So anyway, without good replacements for my typical workflow, I end up just adding inconvenience and still falling back on the old workflows when I can’t figure out how to get what I need degoogled.
Flash Lineage or DivestOS, then add non-google apps as needed.
Install GApps into a different user profile (pretty sure it’s Lineage that works this way now, may be DivestOS).
OK, that’s not for everyone. Start with the Universal Android Debloat Utility
It’s really good at showing what you can safely disable, and is easy to re-enable stuff if you have problems. I’ve only ever had issues from disabling stuff listed as problematic.
I don’t know of a good list like you’re describing - your chrome issue was likely because you disabled the rendering engine, and not just chrome. Android needs a web rendering engine (the default is chrome), which can be replaced.
Edit: Another commenter linked to this list
I can’t wait for home assistant assist to be good enough to replace Gemini as a assistant. Without the need for an llm
I’ve already replaced It with Home Assistant. Wake words are still shaky, but everything else is at least as good if you’re willing to configure it. At least for my use cases.
Are you able to control phone functions with assist? I don’t use it mainly because I set voice timers a lot and wasn’t able to find a way to do it with assist.
I knew they were going to end up going full gemini, but this seems too soon to pull such shenanigans, considering it’s still slow to respond, can’t do several things that assistantcan do, and is 100% useless when not on data.
I tried it, then uninstalled pretty quickly. If I say, “Play music” then 10% of the time it would play music, and the other 90% it would tell me it can’t. Same with many other assistant commands like controlling lights.
What even is the option here? When Google got rid of adding things to lists, I started my official transition away from them by moving to Proton, self hosting more stuff, etc. But for a voice assistant it seems like open source just isn’t there yet, it doesn’t have the hardware, and my only remaining option is to switch to Amazon (no.) Or Apple.
