Google has taken today to make a handful of new and recently spotted changes in Assistant’s Snapshot interface official, while also revealing a whole new way to access it. Just say “Hey Google, show me my day” to see your Snapshot, loaded with cards showing timely details from your agenda, weather, commute, and to-dos, plus restaurant, podcast, and recipe recommendations — all among an even bigger list of potentially useful stuff.
In case you’re unfamiliar, Snapshot is essentially the successor to the old Google Now feed we all loved, built right into Assistant and accessed via that strange-looking “excited square-bottom bowl” icon (maybe it’s supposed to be some kind of inbox?) when you pull up Assistant or launch the Google app.
As usual, some of these changes may already sound familiar, and that’s because we’ve covered them as they’ve rolled out. Google likes to test things secretly and quietly before making them official. So recent changes like the new podcast and music recommendation card, recipe suggestions, calendar events, and weather cards, have already been around for a bit, but now they’ve officially made the cut — not every test does. Some of the other changes we haven’t explicitly seen in the wild were revealed courtesy of the toggles in the Snapshot customization menu that recently appeared. But the “top 5 news” and “write your to-dos” cards also seem new.
The “Hey Google, show me my day” command to immediately access Snapshot is also news to us. Though it may have worked before now, it’s hard to accidentally stumble on new Assistant commands. (Right now it just seems to trigger my morning routine on my Smart Displays, though.)
Google has also announced that English markets will be getting birthday reminders via Snapshot, conveniently tied to notifications so you don’t miss them, and with bundled actions including shortcuts to call, text, or send people a personalized birthday song.
Google says more features for Snapshot are coming, too, so we’ll keep an eye out for any new tests.
