Google has lately been on a roll. After announcements of some hardware and updates to search, Google introduced some new features for Google Assistant that will be released soon which includes a new UI and a dark theme mode.
The new UI will make it easy for users to interact with the display and access the information searched by them without summoning the Assistant. The display previously had a long list of functions that can be scrolled by the user and it was difficult to access the feature wanted by the user. Now the functions would get divided into different pages in the display.
The first among these pages is known as “Your Morning”, “Your Afternoon” or “Your Evening” on which the Assistant will provide recommendations based on what they think will be useful for the user. As an example, the “Your Morning” screen would would show a reminder for the first meeting, a summary of the morning news and an update on the weather.
The “Home Control” page will offer one area to access the smart thingamajigs like cameras and lightbulbs. ‘Media’ is handy to start a YouTube video, podcast and the like and ‘Communicate’ can easily start a Meet or Duo call. At last, ‘Discover’ helps to learn about various features that can be accessed on the smart display.
Another visible new feature is the ability to activate dark theme in these displays. It will work in the same way like it does on smartphones and make the panel easier for the eyes of the user mainly at night. Users can set the display to automatically change according to the time of the day and can prefer something brighter if the sun is out.
Another update includes the ability to run personal and work accounts on smart displays that is useful for meetings and calls and to auto-frame the webcam image at the Nest Hub Max and increase the brightness of the screen before the alarm goes off.
The features are starting to roll out and a few of them might take time to arrive.