Let your Google Assistant send audio messages, read pages out loud, among other things

While we would all probably want to have a virtual assistant or a real-life assistant to help us out with all our gazillion tasks, not everyone can afford to hire one of course. For some things, you can actually rely on your Google Assistant, a fact that they’re highlighting in a new post. One new thing that not everyone may know is you can actually get it to send audio messages to your contacts. You can also get it to read web articles out loud, take a selfie, share favorite content, etc.

Previously, you could already ask your Google Assistant to send messages for you by dictating what you want to say. But it doesn’t always get it right of course so sometimes it’s better to just send out an audio message. You can now just say “Hey Google, send an audio message to Mom saying I’ll be late” or say, “Hey Google, send an audio message” then wait for the prompt to start talking.

This feature lets you add a “personal touch” to your message since it’s your voice they’ll be hearing but with no response needed. If you do want to get into a conversation with the person you want to talk to, you can also ask Google Assistant to start a voice call or a video call or even to just send a text message if you don’t feel lie talking. Of course, you can do all these without having to lift a finger or a hand.

If you need to read an article from the web but you have to finish another task while doing so, you can also ask your digital assistant to read it out loud to you. When you have a web article open on your browser, just say “Hey Google, read it” or “Hey Google, read this page” and you will be able to “listen” to that piece of news or that blog post or whatever it is that needs reading.

You can also do things like ask Google Assistant to take a selfie to open your front camera or ask it to share a link or image with one of your contacts. The send audio message feature though is only available in English-speaking countries and in Brazil.