The Google Assistant can be genuinely useful, but it's also pretty chatty. Google just updated its support site to detail a new feature that invites Assistant to put a sock in it. Soon, you'll be able to turn off Assistant speech output on your phone.

You can learn about the new speech output toggle on Google's Assistant voice support page. The new section, titled "Turn off speech output," explains how you can get a quieter Assistant experience. Just open Assistant, tap the explore icon, open the settings, go to the Assistant tab, and tap "Phone" (Google doesn't mention this step). Under "Voice and speech," you'll find an option to change speech output to Hands-free only.

And just like that, Assistant will do what you say, but it won't speak out loud to tell you about it. Responses still appear on the screen, though. Sadly, there's still no option to make Assistant on speakers less chatty. At least the light commands aren't as annoying anymore.

Source: Google Support