While Google Assistant is quite powerful and does a lot of things right, its in-app integration with third-party apps has been spotty at best. However, that seems to be changing now, as Google has started to tighten the screws and bring deeply related in-app actions to Google Assistant. With the recent update, you can now invoke in-app actions from third-party apps, such as opening Explore tab on Instagram, updating profile picture on WhatsApp, etc. . So, if you want to browse and add third-party shortcuts to Google Assistant, follow it.
Add third-party shortcuts to Google Assistant
1. Open the Google app and go to the “More” menu in the bottom bar. Now navigate to Settings -> Google Assistant.
2. Now press the “ Services” and open “Shortcuts”.
3. Here you will find all third-party shortcuts supported by Google Assistant on your smartphone. Keep in mind that shortcuts are populated based on the apps you have installed on your device. Now, press “+” to add your favorite shortcuts and you’ll receive a confirmation from Google Assistant.
4. You will find all your third-party shortcuts under the “ Your shortcutstab ” . For example, here I added “New Keep Notes”, “Twitter Messages”, “Explore Instagram”, etc.
5. Now go ahead and say “ Ok Google, check the news” and it will take you directly to the Twitter search tab where you can find all kinds of trending news on Twitter. I also tried other variations like “check twitter news” and it got me to the same page. Basically, you don’t need to remember the correct phrase. Just say something closer to the original command and the wizard will process it correctly.
Perform in-app actions of third-party apps with Google Assistant
This is how you can add and run third-party shortcuts with Google Assistant. To be fair, this kind of functionality was already present on Google Assistant, but it wasn’t deeply related or required extensive support from Google.
For example, recently Google Assistant added support for WhatsApp calls and audio messages. It’s good to see that Google hosts all of these third-party integrations in one place so users can browse and add their favorite shortcuts.
That said, we’d like Google to allow users to tinker with any action in the app and not just the predefined ones, like the powerful Shortcuts app on iOS. Maybe that will happen in the future. Anyway, it all comes from us. If you want to learn more about these features, check out our article on the best Google Assistant commands.
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