Google Assistant is arguably the best voice assistant on a smartphone right now — from making restaurant reservations to holding calls for you, it can do so much. But if you're not in the mood for talking, an upcoming feature will give you a handy, speech-less way of getting Assistant to help you out.
The folks over at XDA Developers have discovered strings in version 12.15.7.29 of the Google app that suggests the company is working on a feature called "My actions." As Google puts it, these "can be configured to do anything Assistant can do, in just one tap." If there's a command that you often repeat — like "turn on the lights in the bedroom" — you'll be able to activate it with a single tap on your screen.
The strings in the code don't spell it out, but it sounds like Google will let you place these custom shortcuts on the homescreen.
For what it's worth, this is something you can already do via Assistant Routines. While the main purpose of this feature is to trigger multiple tasks with a single voice command, you can also create Routines that only have a single task and place them on the homescreen for one-tap access — the same thing that "My actions" will seemingly offer.
If you want to try this out, head to Google > Settings > Google Assistant > Routines. Here, choose an existing routine or create a new one and then tap on the icon circled in the screenshot below to add it to your homescreen.
It appears as though "My actions" will seek to make this existing process more straightforward for those who don't use Routines currently or don't know that it can be used for a single action. There may be more to it than this that we don't yet know about, but only time will tell. We'll keep an eye out for any further developments.