Google Assistantis like a do-it-all accessibility feature on steroids, letting you set alarms, take notes, and manage shopping lists curated on apps likeAnyListandBringwith only your voice. However, Google has recently announced it will deprecate support for Assistant’s integration with third-party list and notes apps, leaving the virtual companion integrated only withGoogle Keep.
Maintaining shopping lists through Google Assistant can be rather convenient, because you just need voice commands to open the list or note, have it read out to you, or add stuff to it. However, a Redditor recentlyreceived communicationfrom AnyList explaining the app won’t be operable through Assistant voice commands starting June 20.
Google’s documentationhas also been updated to reflect this disappointing change, and it’s not just AnyList getting axed — support is ending for every note and list serviceexceptGoogle Keep, so options like Bring and Any.do will also disappear by June 20. Thankfully, you can use theAssistant notes & listscategory inGoogle Takeoutto export your old lists and notes from Assistant, including from third-party notes apps.
This isn’t the first time Google has shifted directions on Assistant’s note-taking capabilities. At its inception, the service used Google Keep for notes and lists, but the companymoved shopping list functionality to Google Express in 2017. It ultimately walked back this change and opened up Assistant lists to third-party services, but it seems we’re now back at square one with Google Keep being the only option.
Google’s timing for this change is curious, considering itshuttered Assistant’s Conversational Actionsin favor of App Actions for Android last year, and gave developers until June 13 this year to adjust. It’s possible that Assistant’s third-party note-taking capabilities are built on the Conversational Actions system, but notes and lists weren’t explicitly mentioned inGoogle’s sunsetting plansfor this system.
Incidentally, most of the third-party note-taking apps mentioned here are still supported on other voice assistants like Siri and Amazon Alexa. We just hope Google isn’t shooting itself in the foot with this change, making Assistant less useful, and potentially inviting litigation.
