Google Assistant adds weather and traffic manual check for “Your Places”
If there are places that you frequent on an almost daily basis, like your home and your work (well, under normal non-pandemic circumstances), you’ve probably saved them on your Google Assistant settings. This makes it easier to use the location-based actions across various Google apps and services. But there are still some things that need to be improved, like being able to quickly manually check on weather and traffic conditions. Now Google is adding direct buttons that you can use if you don’t want to talk to your voice assistant.
Android Police notes that some users are reporting seeing new buttons in their Google Assistant settings. If you go to your Assistant settings, you’ll Your Places under the You tab, under Youe data and Basic info. If you still have the old UI, you’ll only be able to add a new place alongside the already existing places you’ve previously added. You can also delete places that you don’t frequent anymore. Any changes you make here will reflect on apps like Google Maps.
But some users are seeing additional buttons underneath each place: “Check traffic” and “Check weather”. While you can always ask Google for a traffic situation and a weather forecast, for those times that you don’t want to “talk” to your assistant, you now have an option. It’s not as easy as you would like since you have to do a lot of tapping as it’s buried within the Google Assistant settings.
Right now when most people are not traveling to work and are working from home, these buttons will not be useful at all. But when we return to some semblance of normalcy, the easier way would still be to ask your Google Assistant about the traffic and weather before you leave home or you leave the office. Still, you now have that option if ever you need it. You just have to remember how to get there.
Not all users are seeing the new buttons under Your Places so it may be a server-side change. Still, it would be good to run the latest version of the Google app, which right now is version 11.9.15.
