What's your absolutely least favorite way to spend time? Commuting in rush-hour traffic? Waiting in line to renew your license? Time was we'd be putting "sitting around listening to hold music" right up there near the top, but right around this time last year Google introduced its Hold for Me service, an Assistant-powered feature that could take over when a phone call left you on hold. With Hold for Me, you could go about your day while Assistant waited for a live person to finally show up. Now we're getting word that access to Hold for Me is expanding to users in some new regions.

This trick first debuted with the launch of the Pixel 5 and 4a (5G) in late September, 2020. It was a few more months before we'd see Hold for Me arrive for older Pixel devices, ultimately supporting models back to the Pixel 3.

But even with more Pixel phones able to access Hold for Me, there was still another big restriction (and this being Google, it shouldn't be hard to guess what we're talking about): location. Only Pixel users in the US were able to tap into the power of this mode and save themselves the time and annoyance of sitting around and listening to hold music.

We still haven't seen any formal announcement of an expansion to new countries, but a number of recent reports sure suggest Google's making Hold for Me available in more English-speaking nations around the globe. Specifically, we've received tips from a couple readers in Australia letting us know that Hold for Me has gone live for them. There's also a new report from MobileSyrup that shows the feature beginning to arrive for Pixel phones in Canada.

Hopefully we'll see this move continue into even more countries full of people who have much better things to do than sit waiting on hold.

Thanks: Hugh, Saul