Google Assistant is going away on Mobile Devices

Posted by franze 1 day ago

Comments

Comment by Magicrafter13 1 day ago

Google Assistant is going away, to be replaced by - checks notes - Google Assistant by a different name.

Tangentially related, does anyone know any FOSS (local preferred, but self hosted if required for performance) assistant apps? After switching to GrapheneOS I do miss Bixby (say what you want about it, but creating reminders/alarms by merely holding down a button and using natural speech was quite handy).

Comment by selicos 1 day ago

Another name and worse experience. Bloated, heavy, slow, bad with voice commands, and overall much more annoying to work with.

One of the few things google did better than Apple was the minimal assistant. That's gone. Gemini is just worse.

Comment by advisedwang 1 day ago

Home Assistant [1] can be a voice assistant (both on phone and on dedicated devices). It's FOSS and can be fully local [2]. It's really gear towards home automation though, so its suitability depends on what you want to do with an assistant

[1] https://www.home-assistant.io/

[2] Although frankly to have a fast-enough and good-enough LLM you might need to use a service

Comment by Magicrafter13 1 day ago

I do want to setup home assistant at some point, but my main usecase for a smartphone assistant is what I mentioned. Things like setting reminders/todo list items, creating calendar events - even sending quick messages to contacts. Basically, things I can already do on my phone, but can do quicker through natural language.

Comment by Dayshine 1 day ago

I just have an always on VPN so can tunnel back to my home assistant server; which can handle todos/reminders/calendar events. Quick messages to contacts I haven't considered.

Comment by Magicrafter13 1 day ago

I already use a VPN (Proton) so I can't VPN back to my home (i.e. Tailscale). A very unfortunate limitation of Android.

RethinkDNS has the potential to solve all my problems since it can do per-app proxies, however I've found that it doesn't work well with Proton (or possibly Wireguard as a whole) with frequent proxy disconnects, making it a very painful experience. Which is a shame because in some cases I value DNS filtering more than VPN.

Comment by ignoramous 18 hours ago

rdns dev here

The latest version is v055z [0], which handles WireGuard re-connectivity better across a range of providers. One Proton specific quirk we've hit was: Since Rethink lets you connect multiple WireGuards at once, their free tier especially may start rejecting "WireGuard handshakes" from your client, if you do so.

Some tips:

- If you don't mind extra battery use, setup "Persistent KeepAlive" for your all your WireGuard Peers. Any value between 30s to 100s is decent enough.

- Alternatively, if you're on version v055v+, then consider turning on Configure -> Network -> Smart Persistent Keepalive which shouldn't use up as much battery but yet attempt to keep a connection open whenever "user presence" is expected by Rethink.

- Turn on Configure -> DNS -> Split DNS only if you're Android 12+ which has comparatively better APIs to be able to implement per-app split-tunnel DNS across multiple WireGuards.

- Tap on the "Refresh" icon in Configure -> Proxy -> Setup WireGuard to instruct Rethink to attempt re-connections to all dormant Peers.

- Look for internal state in About -> General (scroll to the bottom to the section that goes "WireGuard") and see if you spot any mismatch there with respect to MTU, for example. And if so, consider opening a report on GitHub.

- Look for About -> App Logs and see if you spot any errors (or for warning, info, or debug, you'll have to change the log level when prompted) related to WireGuard. You can use the search bar to filter for "wg", which should keep the output limited to WireGuard stuff.

- Change Configure -> Network -> Choose IP version to "Auto" if you happen to go between IPv4-only / IPv6-only / dual-stack networks, or set it to "IPv4 & IPv6", if you're always on dual-stack networks.

[0] https://github.com/celzero/rethink-app/releases/v0.5.5z

Comment by Magicrafter13 14 hours ago

Thanks for the tips. I currently have 0.5.5y - I'll update and try these out and see if my experience improves. I also have a paid Proton plan so they shouldn't be rejecting my connections but it's definitely still possible since I think their plans are for "up to 5 devices" or something like that, and I do have a few connections at all times.

Comment by pzlarsson 1 day ago

Last time I tried, Android Auto refused to connect with an error message stating it will not start if VPN is active on the phone.

Comment by Magicrafter13 14 hours ago

Works for me in my dedicated Android Auto user profile in GrapheneOS. Proton VPN with 'killswitch' turned on, and I've been able to use Android Auto. Though, I don't think I gave Android Auto network/internet permissions, so it shouldn't know if I'm on a VPN or not. Android Auto doesn't need internet to function (though the apps you run in it might, i.e. Google Maps).

Comment by advisedwang 1 day ago

Yeah HA isn't the best choice. It can do some of that stuff, but will require lots of customization to do so. Plus I think you would find things it can't do at all.

Comment by threecheese 1 day ago

Nobody wants to say “Hey Nabu” though ;) Including me (and I bought one of the things)

Comment by koala_man 1 day ago

I spent years not upgrading because when I'm in my car asking my phone to navigate somewhere, Gemini likes to say "As a large language model I can't navigate anywhere. Try using a map application on your mobile device."

It still does it, but these days you can reply: "yes you %@#$ing can, use a tool call!!" and it will

Comment by jessfyi 1 day ago

Always stuck to the flagship google models as my primary driver (starting with the G1 in college) for the pure google experience, but between killing assistant in favor of Gemini which can't do something as simple as telling me the weather without hallucinating and the sideloading lockdown shenanigans might as well switch over to Apple fully.

Comment by duskdozer 1 day ago

Why not use a custom ROM and install what you want?

Comment by croes 1 day ago

All the ads I get for Google Gemini are always about fake selfies so I guess fake data is its main purpose

Comment by Tactical45 1 day ago

Don't be dramatic. Gemini is fine. I have the Google voice setup all throughout my house and haven't had any issues major enough that would want me to keep the original assistant.

Comment by jessfyi 1 day ago

It's not dramatic, it's just something you personally haven't noticed. A quick search regarding Gemini weather hallucination shows it's both widespread and something not mitigated by recent model releases. It makes up other basic information or can't perform tasks that a simple assistant can do properly (e.g. mixing up calendar events, emails, can't navigate etc). Why defend what is clearly a move to increase a department's KPIs when you as a consumer receive less in return?

Comment by lawsthro0532 1 day ago

Besides mispronouncing words most days, it literally said it was snowing and Florida-hot in one sentence this week. It's the first time it's been that wrong though.

Comment by selicos 1 day ago

Gemini has no idea what to do when I tell it to 'Navigate home'. Or 'Next song'.

It's objectively worse at every basic command.

Comment by LogicFailsMe 1 day ago

Gemini defaults to performing search from within its own weights until you curse it and damn it sufficiently to do basic RAG. Utter trash on this limitation/behavior alone but there are so many other hallucinatory shenanigans it embraces so why limit yourself to one.

Compare and contrast with asking Claude or ChatGPT a question directly and get back to me.

Comment by SirFatty 1 day ago

I never thought I'd see a Gemini apologist.

Comment by alienbaby 1 day ago

Hmm. Gemini cannot do various things I used to do with assistant, especially interacting across some apps, or jsut behaving as it used to , and now sometimes ends up in a situation where I have two audio sources playing one over the other with no way to solve it (if you have morning routines that play the news, and it pops up while listening to teh radio, previously I could say 'stop the news' and the radio would continue while the alarm routine news would stop. Now there is no way at all to stop the routines triggered news, it just carries on over the top ov the radio :/

Comment by sehw 1 day ago

I'm switching to Ubuntu Touch btw.

Comment by yndoendo 1 day ago

I got a FLX1S from FuriLabs. [0]

It currently is my backup and Bluetooth music / audio player. Actually use it more than the Fairphone used for calling. Once some more of the bugs and user experience have been polished, it will be my primary to completely ditch Android.

Turns out I like it better with having two devices while travel. One handles music and GPS navigation. While the phone is used as a phone.

Only two things I like better with the Fairphone are: 1) Ability to remove the battery. 2) Ability to swap the SIM without needing tools.

The only future I see beneficial to me and others is a de-Googled one. Apple is too much of prison cell for me to find it acceptable as an alternative.

[0] https://furilabs.com/

Comment by sehw 15 hours ago

[dead]

Comment by Bluestein 1 day ago

I know I am in the minority, but the killer feature for me is (funny) a vestige from the Google Podcasts days: The "latest news" audio feed it plays back on a built-in player. You tell Assistant to "play the latest news". It plays a pre-selected roster.-

PS. Strangely it used to boilerplate back with "Here's [the/your] latest news" - now it says "Here's your news briefing" ...

... but it still works.-

I will miss that.-

Comment by neaden 1 day ago

This is terrible. I tried the Gemini assistant for awhile and it was a much worse experience. Just making my phone to pump up some internal stat. No way to even give feedback, just we are doing this and we don't care what you think. Google is just losing any value as a company to the consumer.

Comment by ChrisArchitect 1 day ago

As expected (2025) https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/gemini/g...

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Comment by novia 1 day ago

google assistant has been failing at more and more extremely simple tasks the last few months. the writing was on the wall.

Comment by selicos 1 day ago

By design. It worked great, then they launched Gemini and moved features out of Assistant. At least Assistant can still follow basic directions like a voice command to navigate home. Gemini can't.

Comment by novia 22 hours ago

My experience the last few months has been that the "take me to" command no longer worked! "Take me home" for example would no longer work. "Take me to <coffee shop name> in <City>, <State>" stopped working. I relied on that to navigate me to places when I'd already started driving, so it was pretty frustrating when it suddenly stopped.