Towards the end of January 2018, Google’s voice-based personal assistant, Google Assistant started off responding to queries in Hindi. Google eventually announced Hindi support for the Google Assistant, but the feature was limited to a few queries. However, that’s changing big time today. Google is now rolling out the full-fledged Hindi support for the Assistant. The new support is rolling out to devices with Android 6.0 Marshmallow and above and is coming soon on Android 5.0 Lollipop, iPhones (iOS 9.1 and above) as well as Android Oreo (Go edition) devices.
Google Assistant in Hindi
In December 2016, Google Allo received a native Hindi Assistant while Google has also launched a special Google Assistant version for Jio Phone, with support for Hindi and English languages. Now with the launch of full-fledged Hindi support for the Assistant, Hindi speaking users be able to do the same things as the English version of Assistant – from finding directions to nearby restaurants to getting Cricket score updates – in their native language. The Assistant will also respond to them in Hindi as well.
“The Google Assistant is truly Indian, it’s your helpful dost that speaks our language and understands the things you care about, from finding biryani recipes, to pulling up the latest cricket score, or finding directions to the nearest ATM,” said Purvi Shah, Technical Program Manager, Google Assistant, in a press statement.
Actions on Google
In addition to full compatibility for Hindi, Google is also enabling Actions on Google for the Hindi Assistant. Through this, developers can build additional actions for the virtual assistant. Google has also built a dedicated site that gives you an overview of all the actions that are possible with the Hindi Assistant.
Apart from Hindi, Google has expanded Actions on Google in 15 other languages, including Thai, Indonesia, Danish, Swedish, and Dutch. The aim is to help developers create deep link actions within the Google Assistant app for languages other than English.
“In order to make it even more useful to Indians over time, developers and businesses can now build Actions for the Hindi Assistant through the developer platform Actions on Google. Once an action is built, you can just say ‘Ok Google, talk to’ and access the service or content straight through your Google Assistant,” Shah added.
The latest development once again gives Google an upper hand over its nearest rivals, Amazon Alexa and Apple’s Siri, with both of them yet to add Hindi support. Hindi support for Google Assistant could also make space for the launch of Google Home smart speaker range.
You need to download the latest Google Search app to access Google Assistant in Hindi. Once downloaded, set your device language to Hindi and then touch and hold the Home button or say “OK Google,” followed by the command. As Google is rolling out Hindi support through a server-side update, it may take some time to reach your device. Stay tuned for more!
