How often do you put your iPhone down and then forget where it is? If you’re like most people, it happens more often than you’d care to admit. There’s good news — Google Assistant can now help you find your iPhone. While this isn’t new for Android owners, support for the iPhone is no doubt a welcome addition.
All you have to do is say, “Hey Google, find my phone,” and Google will ring your number. It doesn’t matter if you have your phone on silent or not; it will still ring. This works even on iPhones, so don’t worry if you aren’t an Android or Google phone user. You can still take full advantage of the feature.
Google Assistant has been able to help out with this for a while on Android devices, but now Apple users are finally feeling the love. You just have to opt in to receive notifications and critical alerts from the Google Home app.
In addition to finding your phone, Google Assistant picked up a few other new tricks. You can now check out faster while ordering food. Thanks to Google Duplex, Google Assistant can trim down your ordering process to only a few basic steps. Just search for a restaurant near you and place an order. Google Assistant will automatically fill in your contact and payment information. This feature is, unfortunately, only available to Android users at the moment and only works with a few national chains, but Google says it is partnering with more chains across the country soon.
Google Assistant also picked up the ability to create routines based on sunrise and sunset in your specific geographic area. You can set your lights to come automatically when the sun goes down, or to trigger your “Wake up” playlist when the sun rises. In that same vein, Google Assistant can now suggest potential routines to help you figure out more ways to streamline your life.
These new features are more ways that Google aims to make its assistant even more useful in day-to-day life. Following the string of announcements concerning Google devices and the upcoming Google I/O event, the company has major plans for the future that will make it an even bigger competitor to Amazon Alexa.
