The Google app which is available on Android devices functions mostly as a high-powered search tool. But it also brings a host of capabilities right to your screen, and you can take advantage of them almost entirely with your voice.
After downloading and installing it, enable Google Now in order to get the most use out of it — this is a service that brings to life a host of capabilities, like location sharing, that maximize the app’s potential. Once you’re up and running, here are some great tricks you can implement with nothing but your voice.
1. “Hello, Google.”
There’s no button to push in order to get the search engine’s attention. Just say “Hello, Google” — when the app beeps, you’ll know you have its attention. Then you only need to say, in simple language, what you need.
2. “Remind me to ask Chinedu about Question 5 when I get to school.”
With location services enabled, Google knows when you are at home and when you are not. This means its reminder capability can be geographically set — you don’t know exactly when you will be in school, but you can trigger a bunch reminders as soon as you walk in the door, at home or school.
3. “What’s 5,256 times 14?”
Forget punching calculator keys. Speak your math problems aloud and smile with satisfaction at how accurately the app understands your query and gives you the correct answer. (The answer is 73,584, by the way.) It will even do various conversions: “How many cubic metres makes a litre?”
4. “Where am I?”
Perhaps you are someplace new for the first time, and the answer to this question evades you, let Google’s brilliant mapping capabilities be your guide.
5. “What song is playing right now?”
Put Google’s “ears” to the test at identifying most popular music, which it does rather accurately.
6. “How do I say ‘Hello, how are you?’ in French?”
Do you want to impress that really cool chic or guy with French speaking skills you do not possess? Get translations for basic phrases real quick! In situations where you wouldn’t even dare to try to pronounce the translation yourself, Google will say it for you.
7. “Pictures of otters.”
Anything that Google doesn’t recognize as a specific voice request, it processes as a Google search. You can initiate any Google search you want by speaking the search terms.
Still wonder why people say Google knows everything? And what’s more, it wants to make your life easier!
