Google’s Guacamole is (some of) the search company’s Assistant, without the need for a ‘Hey Google’

Google is giving some of its users Guacamole. That’s not some weird code, that’s an actual menu setting appearing on some Android devices. It’s a new setting, named after the tasty green paste you put on your toast if you can’t afford a house of your own, and it’s related to the Google Assistant. It’s also not officially official yet, so we’ve only got a very basic idea what it really does.

Spicy guacamole

As spotted by Android Police, some users are finding that there’s a new setting in the Google Assistant menu. It doesn’t, at this point, actually do anything but it does include descriptions of what it will eventually do. Guacamole is a set of voice shortcuts for the Google Assistant, an opt-in program that will let you skip Assistant’s ‘Hey Google’ wake words for certain tasks.

How exactly this will work and what sort of functionality it’ll have is part of the mystery at the moment. The URL included with the feature isn’t live and since nothing works, there’s no way of testing it in advance. 9to5Google reckons that it’ll give users control over basic features like alarms (telling them to shut up, for instance) and answering phone calls with your voice.

Which makes sense. Google’s Home and Nest hubs already offer that sort of function if you use a timer. Building it into phones seems logical, but there’s bound to be additional data collection taking place in order to use the feature. At least it seems Google’s making Guacamole completely opt-in, for now.

Source/Screenshot: Android Police