How to use Google’s New Continued Conversation Option | Tutorial
Using a digital personal assistant simplifies many everyday tasks and quickly gets you the information you need. The ability of the device to carry out these commands with little time or effort on your part is a definite advantage to using them. However, what if you want your Google Home device or Google Assistant on your phone to carry out several different tasks in rapid succession? Saying “Okay, Google,” or “Hey, Google” over and over again gets tedious and annoying. Now it can keep listening to you with the introduction of the Continued Conversation option.
With Continued Conversation enabled, you only need to say “Hey, Google” one time to activate the device. Afterward, you can continue to ask the assistant to complete tasks without repeating the phrase.
The app will continue listening for eight seconds before turning off completely. To avoid unwanted listening, say “Thank you,” “Thanks, Google,” or “I’m done.” Those phrases will shut it down immediately. If you forget to do that, after the eight seconds have elapsed, the app deletes any recording it may have made.
As of this writing, the Continued Conversation option is only available in the United States and in English.
Enable Continued Conversation Option
To enable Continued Conversation on your Google Home device:
1. Open the Google home app on your phone.
2. In the top-left corner tap the three horizontal lines and verify that you are using the correct email account for your home devices.
3. Select “Continued Conversation.”
4. Turn on the switch.
5. All your Google home devices are now able to use Continued Conversation.
Guarding Your Privacy
When you have a conversation with the Google Assistant on a Home device, lights on the device indicate it is listening. If you do not shut down your device’s ability to record by using one of the key phrases, it will continue monitoring and recording for eight seconds. Then the lights will turn off, and the device is no longer active. Again, the app will delete anything recorded while it waited.
You can also set the app to alert you when the device has stopped listening by following these steps in Google home:
1. Tap the “Devices” tab.
2. Select the device you want to give the end of conversation notification.
3. Access “Settings.”
4. Click on “Accessibility.”
5. Activate the ability to play end sounds.
6. Choose the sound you want to use, and the app will beep to announce that it is no longer listening to you.
If you are worried about what has been saved by the device, you can view and edit your account activity:
1. Tap the “Explore” icon that looks like a compass in the upper-right corner of the app screen.
2. Tap the three dots and select “My Activity.”
3. Delete any activity you do not want to be saved by clicking on the three dots following that entry.
Continued Conversation on Your Phone
If you don’t have Google Home devices, you can still use the continued conversation option on your phone with Google Assistant:
1. Open Google Assistant.
2. Tap the “Explore” icon.
3. Select “Settings.”
4. Under Preferences, select “Continued Conversation.”
Enabling an end sound does not work on the phone version of Assistant.
When Won’t Continued Conversation Work?
There are times when Continued Conversation does not work. If you are on a phone call, it will only listen to your first command, so it will not record any further conversation. If an alarm goes off, Continued Conversation will end. Also, anytime you are listening to music, it will only accept one command at a time.
While you can tick off multiple to-do items in one sitting, remember to use correct phrasing for the tasks you are trying to complete. You cannot, for example, ask Google to add spinach to your shopping list and then come back and just say, “milk.” It won’t remember that you were adding items to your list, so you need to repeat the command, “Add milk to my shopping list.”
Hopefully, this will help you use your Google assistant more efficiently without the constant repeating of the trigger phrase.