Voice controlled music coming to Google Now, which is good news for Android Wear

By Andy Boxall July 8, 2014

It looks like Google is getting ready to introduce hands-free music control to Google Now, ensuring Android phone owners looking to grab an Android Wear smartwatch don’t have to reach for their phone to change their tunes. The news comes for AndroidPolice.com, where a set of screenshots and a short video are presented as evidence of Google’s plans. It has always been possible to open the music app using Google Now, and tell it to play something, but that’s where it ended. This could change in the near future with the addition of tighter control over your music. The new functionality demonstrated lets you skip to the next song in your collection, just by saying “OK Google, play next song.” Although the early version’s functionality is limited at the moment, we’d expect Google to add more controls before its full release, such as the ability to select the previous song, jump to another playlist, and adjust the volume. Hands-free music control on a smartphone is helpful, but it could prove to be invaluable for users of Google’s new Android Wear devices, where the whole point is not to keep taking out your phone just to do simple tasks. It will also work well for Google’s new in-car Android system too. The report suggests the feature, in its pre-release form, is already available for some people, so it’s worth giving the new commands a try. Don’t be disappointed if they don’t work though. It’s the latest in a long line of interesting new Google Now features, which have steadily rolled out to Android phones over the last months. Most center around reminders, the most interesting of which includes letting you know where you parked, paying bills, and even waking you up on the train when you’re nearly home. There’s no word on when Google will officially release the music controls into Google Now, but with Android Wear devices now on sale, we don’t expect it to wait long.

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Andy is a Senior Writer at Digital Trends, where he concentrates on mobile technology, a subject he has written about for…

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