We already covered the flagship feature of Allo - the ability to create a personalized sticker pack from selfies. But Allo 11 has a few other minor features worth mentioning, like improvements to group chats and future support for sending messages with Google Now or Assistant. Let's take a look.

Group chat sharing

Before Allo 11, the only way to add people to group chats was to manually select their name. Now you can either generate a QR code that others can scan, or simply share a link.

To get a link for a group chat, tap the icon of the group chat and select 'Add people.' You should see a button to share an invite link, along with an option to reset the link. For the QR code, tap the group chat icon, press 'Group details,' and select 'Add with QR code.'

 

 

This will generate a code that others can scan by opening the Allo side menu and selecting 'QR scanner.' Unlike the QR scanner on Twitter or Snapchat, there is no option for scanning saved images.

Sending messages with Google Now/Assistant

You probably know that Google Now and Assistant both allow you to send texts with your voice, with phrases like "text Fred hello." This also works for Hangouts messages, but not for Allo. In fact, asking Assistant to send an Allo text results in the following response:

The changelog for Allo 11 on the Play Store says that you are now able to send messages with Now/Assistant, but this functionality doesn't actually seem to be live yet. Maybe an additional server-side change is required for this to work.

APK Download

The APK is signed by Google and upgrades your existing app. The cryptographic signature guarantees that the file is safe to install and was not tampered with in any way. Rather than wait for Google to push this download to your devices, which can take days, download and install it just like any other APK.

Version: 11.0.022_RC10