While Google Assistant can do a lot of things for you, controlling the notifications you receive from it can sometimes be tedious and actually not that helpful. Fixing and personalizing it is not as intuitive as we would like and more importantly, we have pretty limited options from when you to to the Google app’s Notifications section. Now it looks like Google is rolling out new notification controls right inside the Assistant settings, giving users more granular controls and toggles to make their notifications even more personalized.
What most of us currently have right now under the Assistant settings in the Google app are things like Languages, Assistant Voice, Continued Conversation, Voice Match, etc. Down near the bottom is something called Email updates, which from its name, does one thing. According to Android Police, a server-side update has now replaced that with a Notifications section. Tapping it will bring you to Email updates still but now there are other things like Help with Tasks, Tips & Tricks, Subscriptions, Reminders, and Extended Responses.
Each section has granular toggles for the things that you want to receive notifications for. Under Help with Tasks, you can get flight updates, bill reminders, package delivery status, event updates, reservation updates, etc. The extended responses part lets you receive additional information after a query. You can now configure things like maps and directions, movie showtimes, sports updates, etc.
Google is also doing some A/B testing to improve the news section of the Google Assistant. It now shows you more sources and it now has a grid interface so you can browse the different news sections more easily. If you want to add more sources, you can just star them so they’ll show up in your feed. Plus, you can now search for specific news outlets instead of having to scroll through all the available sources.
Both updates are server-side rollouts so you’ll just have to wait when it finally gets to you. You can try signing up for the Google app beta but it’s no guarantee it will show up on your account though.
