Google Assistant has now officially launched on iOS devices in Europe. The iOS users in UK, France and Germany now will be able to use the Google’s voice assistant on their phone in addition to Apple’s Siri.
Google’s virtual Assistant for iOS can be downloaded from the Apple App store in UK, France and Germany now. It was earlier available on iOS devices only in the US. It offers a very similar experience to what it does on Android devices, however, it comes with some restrictions on iOS devices.
Google Assistant for iOS was first announced at Google I/O earlier this year. Google says that the assistant app is developed to operate on devices running iOS 9.1 and above. Which means it covers the majority of iPhone and iPad devices used these days.
It is, however, noteworthy that the Google assistant has slightly limited features on iOS version than the Android version. It is largely due to Apple’s API restrictions that prevent it from higher level system functions. So, on your iPhone it cannot assist you in commands like settings alarms or taking pictures. Also, you cannot replace Siri with Google Assistant on your home button.
According to Google, the iOS version of Google assistant will only be able to do stuff like play music from Spotify and send iMessage. Although, Google does offer an Assistant widget that can be accessed from the widget panel of iPhone’s notification center.
Unlike Apple’s Siri which will probably always be limited to iPhones, iPads and Apple Watches, Google is now expanding its assistant to the other half of the smartphone world. Notably, it can already be found on 95 per cent of all Android devices running Android Marshmallow and above.
Google has a history of launching its services on iOS in order to get those services out to as many people as possible. A few days ago, it was revealed that Google would pay Apple nearly $3 billion this year to remain the default search engine on iOS devices.
