You Can Now Send WhatsApp Messages Without Even Touching Your Phone

Until now, you could use Google Assistant to say “OK Google, send a message” and it would transcribe everything you said.

But why go through the hassle of getting your message transcribed when you can instead use apps such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Viber, and Allo to directly send voice messages?

In situations where you either think the speech-to-text won’t pick up on some of your words or where you want to say something in a language that isn’t supported, sending a voice message is preferable.

Well, now Google has made this option available for its smartphone users. It is, however, only available on WhatsApp for now.

How to Use Google Assistant to Send a Voice Message

All you need to do is follow these steps:

• Open Google Assistant and say “OK Google, send a voice message,” (You don’t even have to touch the phone if you have a Nexus, Pixel or Android One device.)
• The interface shown below shall open where you can specify the recipient and record your message.
• Once you are done recording your message, you can send it by either saying, “OK Google, send,” or tap the send button on the top right and the audio clip will be sent just as it is sent via WhatsApp to the person you choose.

 

You can send your message using any of these three methods:

1. You can ask Google to “Send a voice message”. Google will then ask for recipient and start recording the audio
2. You can ask Google to “Send a voice message to X”, (that is you can specify the recipient). Google shall then take the name of the recipient and instantly start recording.
3. You can ask Google to “Send a voice message to X, saying…” (You can specify the message and the recipient). Google shall then record everything you said after the name and prepare the recipient and clip for you, so you can directly send it.

You obviously have the liberty to edit and cancel your message before sending it. You can change the recipient as well as delete your recorded message.

Adding Shortcuts to Google Assistant

If you don’t want to use the exact words while recording your message, you can also use shortcuts.

 

This Feature is Yet to Appear On:

• Android Wear: Assistant does not record audio clips and lets the user only dictate and transcribe messages there.
• Google Search/widget voice command, where the voice message interface doesn’t get triggered.

It is limited to WhatsApp only and while other services like Telegram, Viber, BBM, Threema, and TextPlus do support Assistant, they only let you send a regular voice message as an option.

Regardless of its limitations, the new feature is still a significant advancement for its users. Users can also set the Google Assistant to only work with their voice.

You no longer have to hold onto the mic button to record a WhatsApp voice message or make sure that you speak in English without a word of any other language in between so that the dictation works. And you can always send WhatsApp text messages using your voice if that’s how you want to communicate.

Via AndroidPolice