Do you like options? There are still lots of options.
Ever since Google introduced the Assistant back in 2016, the company has been making it smarter with new features and capabilities. But with feature creep comes settings freak — the Assistant settings page has always been kinda confusing and convoluted even for techy folks. Google experimented with a cleaner design earlier this year, and now it seems to be rolling out more broadly — but with a few new tweaks.
The new design puts a more human-centered spin on things, with your personal avatar and account info on top and a short selection of the most popular settings below. There are five options in this section, including quick access to routines, language options, and choosing a default music service.
Left: The current Assistant settings Right: The new settings page currently rolling out
Once you scroll down past the popular options, there are two highlighted sections called "You" and "Devices." Tapping "You" goes to a page where information and personal preferences can be managed, while the "Devices" page lists hardware currently linked to the Assistant. It's still a bit buggy, as all my phones are showing up incorrectly, and tapping one of them doesn't do anything.
This is an improvement, but I still think it looks a bit too intimidating for the average user.
At the bottom of the new settings page is a list of all the choices you can make when it comes to the Assistant, organized alphabetically. There's also an option to hide the less popular settings categories, but you've got to scroll all the way down to find it.
If you don't have the new Assistant settings page design yet, you probably will soon. It's showing up for me in stable version 11.23.11.29 of the Google app, which can be downloaded from APK Mirror, but it's more likely that this change is rolling out via a server-side switch, and isn't tied to any specific version. The fastest way to check if you've got the update is by asking Google to "open Assistant settings."
