Hitherto, Google Assistant has only been able to read out SMS messages, with third-party app conversations needing to be manually viewed instead.
This is changing as Google has updated Assistant to read out replies from third-party apps such as Telegram, WhatsApp, Slack, Discord, GroupMe, and so on. According to Android Police, Google Assistant will now not only read text from these apps aloud but it also lets you answer them.
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However, the limitation is that pictures, videos and audio notes aren’t accessible with this feature. The Assistant will simply say, “the message just contains an audio attachment,” for example, and won’t play it back.
It is not clear when this new feature will be rolled out globally.
To try this new feature, users have to activate Assistant on their Android phone, and say the command ‘read my messages’. Ensure that you have unread messages waiting in your notifications for this to work. Google Assistant will pick messages one after the other and read it out aloud.
