Gemini's new extension brings back your favorite Google Assistant features on Android

If you’ve been missing Google Assistant since Gemini took over, you’ll want to know about a major upgrade coming to your phone.

One of the biggest complaints about Gemini on Android is that it lacks a lot of the basic functionality that Google Assistant had like setting alarms and timers and controlling media.

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A new “Utilities” extension aims to fix that. As Google explains, this tool lets you ask Gemini to handle certain actions on your device. 

You can use it to set and manage alarms and timers in your clock app, open websites, take photos and screenshots, control your media playback, browse or search for screenshots in Pixel Screenshots, and more. You can find the full list on Google’s support page. 

Gemini can even handle multiple requests at once like “Turn my media volume and notification volume to [percentage] and turn on battery saver” or “take a photo with a 10s timer.”

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In addition, several lock-screen-specific features are on the way, like the ability to set or silence alarms and timers, turn on and off your flashlight, enable Bluetooth, check your phone’s battery level, or restart.

Google included a small list of things that Gemini can’t yet do: turn closed captioning on or off, change the language for media, find and open specific pages on a website, change Gemini’s language, or use Find My Device.

Utilities are only available on the Gemini mobile app for Android devices, and you will need to have Gemini as your primary phone assistant. Google is releasing it gradually, so if you don’t see it right now (it wasn’t available on my Pixel 8 Pro when I checked), you should see it soon. 

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You can check to see if you have Utilities by tapping your profile photo in the top right corner and looking for “Extensions.”