Google Assistant Now Reads Out WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack Messages, Even Lets You Reply to Them

All you have to do is ask Google Assistant to ‘read my messages’.

By Tasneem Akolawala | Updated: 5 August 2019 18:32 IST

Google Assistant Now Reads Out WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack Messages, Even Lets You Reply to Them

Google Assistant can now read out third-party app messages

Highlights

Assistant will only read out text messages
It will not play audio messages or videos
You can even reply to those messages if you want

Google Assistant can now read WhatsApp, Telegram, and Slack messages out loud, and even reply to them. Earlier, the tech giant's voice assistant was restricted to reading SMS texts sent via the native messaging app only, but now that feature supports third-party communication apps as well. This includes apps like GroupMe, Discord, Slack, Telegram, WhatsApp, and many more. To try this new feature, users have to activate Google Assistant on their Android phone, and say the command ‘read my messages'.

You can check if this feature works for you or not, by activating Google Assistant and commanding it to ‘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. It will show you the message in the form of a card, and will tell you from who the message is and from which app, and then ask you if you want to hear it or not. If you say ‘yes' the message will be read out loud. In case of an audio, video, or an image, the Assistant will simply say that ‘the message contains an audio/video/ or a photo', and won't play the media for you.

Once the text message is read out loud, the Assistant will ask you if you want to reply. You can then speak your message, and Assistant will convert it into text and send it to the group/individual. If there are several messages, Google Assistant will prompt you of all, until the list is over. Once all the messages are read out loud and replies are sent, Assistant will intimate the user that ‘this was the last one'.

This useful feature is now showing up on Android phones, and it seems to have been rolled out a few days ago. We were able to spot it on our Android 9.0 Pie-running phone as well. Android Police was the first to report about it.

Let us know in the comments below if you're able to access WhatsApp or Telegram messages via Google Assistant and hear them out loud.

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