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It's been a long time since Google Now disappeared from your phone's home screen, but fans of contextual feeds and informational cards haven't been without a replacement. Google launched Snapshot back in 2018, and although it's gone through various changes since, it's always been accessible through Assistant. Unfortunately, its days have come to an end, finally leaving the legacy of Now in the rearview mirror.
This Google Discover hack has us yearning for the Google Now of old
Remember when the feed was actually useful?
Once upon a time, the screen to the left of the homescreen on Google's Nexus phones and tablets was called Google Now, and it was a genuinely useful feed full of contextual information about things like your commute, upcoming calendar appointments, package deliveries, and so on. This eventually went away as the screen, now Google Discover, was turned into a news feed. There's now a way to get it back, but it's unfortunately limited to those using Xposed on a rooted device.
After ruining Google Now and Chrome, news articles start popping up in Assistant's daily snapshot
Nowhere is safe
Once upon a time, in a galaxy far away, Google announced a groundbreaking service called "Google Now." For the few lucky people who got to experience it, Now was everything you wanted at the swipe of your finger. Future appointments, trips, scheduled deliveries, upcoming reservations, all useful information without any fluff. Then random articles and news started flooding it. At first, they were dismissable with a swipe, until they were not. Slowly, Now became Discover, and your cards went away, leaving in their wake any information Google wanted to shove in your face.
There's a shortcut to access Assistant's daily Snapshot, but only Google can enable it for you
When did a shortcut become so exclusive?
Assistant's daily Snapshot feed is the reincarnation of the Google Now of ol' for our modern times. It took a few years for Google to migrate and integrate most of Now's excellent functionality into Assistant, but we're finally there now. We get weather, calendar, shipping, travel, commute, reservation, and more contextual cards, and it's all customizable. We can even call it with a simple "Hey Google, show me my day." What we can't do, though, is swipe right on the homescreen to get to it — that functionality has been monopolized by the Discover articles and ads. But Google has implemented another faster way to get to Snapshot. The only issue? You can't force it, you have to wait for the Googods to give it to you.
OnePlus has been surprisingly hesitant to illuminate the precise differences between the T-Mobile and unlocked versions of its phones, but gradually the distinctions are coming to light. Recently, it was revealed to us that the T-Mobile version replaces the OnePlus Launcher's "Shelf" functionality with the popular Google Now Feed Discover, and OnePlus remains tight-lipped as to whether the feature is coming to other phones, though it admits only the T-Mobile version has it for now.
Long ago, before Google Now turned into the Feed, Google used to provide you with an easily accessible summary of custom tailored, account-scraped stuff, useful for keeping track of various deadlines or ongoing details. In that transition to Feed, though, the information was relegated to a new "Upcoming" tab in the Google app, and the personal overview started to stagnate a bit. Well, Google's bringing it all back better than ever via the Assistant.
Just about a month ago, the "what's this song" music identification functionality started to roll out to Assistant on both of the new Pixel 2 phones. Google's voice search (for instance, via "Google Now") had this functionality for a long time, but for whatever reason, the transition to the new Assistant stripped that feature away. Although it was back for the Pixel 2, it appears that music recognition in the Assistant is now rolling out to non-Google devices as well.
Google has been toying with changes to the Google Feed in its eponymous app all year, seemingly settling on a translucent look when you swipe right from your launcher home screen, or the three-tab interface in the full app. Google may still be testing different options, so yours may not be the same as mine, but I find it a lot worse than what I had before, especially as I can't swipe away cards to dismiss them anymore.
It's been a long road, getting from there to hereIt's been a long road, getting from there to here. Google announced at the end of 2016 that it would start rolling out a tabbed interface in the Google app - one tab for your feed (previously known as Google Now), and the other for reminders/emails/etc. But then Google only enabled it for a small amount of users, and left it at that for a few months. Then a third tab was added, and even more users received the changed interface.
Back in February of last year, Google unveiled Accelerated Mobile Pages - or AMP, for short. In a nutshell, sites can choose to generate AMP versions of their pages (with an automated tool or site plugin), which load extremely quick compared to normal sites. This is due to various restrictions, compression on the included images/video, and caching by Google's own servers.
Google has been tweaking the Google Feed (previously known as Google Now) page quite a bit recently. They started rolling out a dual-tabbed interface in December, but seemingly stopped shortly after. Last month, a new transparent Google Now pane appeared for one user, and now a modified version has showed up.
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- Version 5.3 of Nova Launcher is now in the stable release so you no longer need to be part of the beta. However, you still need the Nova Google Companion app to be able to see the Google Now/Feed integration on the homescreen.
Nova Launcher is the go-to launcher for so many not just for the sheer amount of customization it offers, but also the speed and frequency at which the team instills new features. However, one feature that people have constantly clamored for has always been left out: Google Now integration. It just couldn't be added due to constraints that Google had put in place. But today, Nova Launcher is finally receiving this long-awaited functionality.
One of the main downsides to using a custom launcher was that you couldn't have an easily-accessible Google Now pane. While your feed is just a swipe away on the Google Now and Pixel Launchers, other applications were barred from using it due to API restrictions. That is, until the developer of Nova Launcher found a way around it by creating the 'Nova Google Companion.'
Google Now was a big deal when it debuted years back, but now Google is all about Assistant. The Google Now pane got its last redesign in 2015, but Google appears to be testing something more radical currently. Some users are starting to see a transparent Google Now pane.
Google regularly conducts server-side tests - showing new features and UI changes to only a handful of users at a time. Unfortunately, sometimes these have adverse affects on users. In this case, Google has broken the Play Store and Google Now for some users, as a result of two independent server-side tests.
The Google app feed (formerly known as Google Now) includes relevant bits of data from around the web and culled from your own data. One card we almost all have is weather, and Google looks to be experimenting with a new version of that one. Rather than the large card with the forecast, the new one is a single line with a few bits of relevant information.
Always-listening voice assistants, like Google Now/Assistant or Alexa, can't really tell the difference between you talking and someone else (unless you have Trusted Voice enabled on Android). Maybe you've watched a few tech videos where someone said "Ok Google," and your phone started talking back.