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I will never forgive Google for removing support for this Assistant voice command
Google kills off its products at an alarming pace. We probably don’t need to worry about it killing off Pixel phones, but it had no problem shuttering Stadia after investing millions into it and recently even got rid of Google Podcasts, which one would have assumed to be a lock for a good long time, considering the popularity of podcasts. At this point, I have learned not to attach myself too much to anything the company creates because who knows if/when it will be moved to the infamous Google Graveyard.
Still, there are some things that you think are so safe, so ironclad, that there’s no way Google could kill them off. One of these was a simple Google Assistant voice command that allowed you to add text entries into list apps. Google supported this through a system called Notes & Lists.
The way this worked is that third-party apps would integrate the Notes & Lists API so users could say things to Assistant like, “Hey Google, add _____ to my _____ list.” Intelligently, Assistant would know what list you were referring to in what app and then add that text. Most commonly, this would be used to add an item to a shopping list, such as the classic, “Hey Google, add eggs to my grocery list.”
Unfortunately, in 2023, Google inexplicably disabled Notes & Lists, along with almost two dozen other Assistant features. This meant that all third-party apps could no longer support using Assistant voice commands to manipulate lists and notes.
It’s been over a year, and I’m still mad about it.
Do you miss adding items to third-party lists with Assistant commands?
Grocery lists used to be so easy!
I used to use this command with an app called AnyList, which, in my opinion, is the best way to keep your shopping organized. For groceries especially, I’ve yet to find an app that makes things as easy or intuitive as AnyList. And its core features are free, which is awesome.
I used to be able to work in the kitchen, tending to a bubbling pot or hands covered in flour, and simply say, “Hey Google, add eggs to my grocery list,” and the Assistant would add eggs to my grocery list within AnyList. This was incredibly convenient because I could add things as soon as I thought of them instead of hoping I would remember the next time I had my phone in my (hopefully clean) hands.
Adding items hands-free to a curated, automatically organized grocery list is something I used to do daily.
Simultaneously, AnyList would move that new “eggs” entry to the dairy section of my grocery list, keeping everything nice and organized so that when I got to the grocery store, all my dairy items were together. This prevented me from needing to run around the store multiple times to find my items or sit there combing through my list to see if I needed to grab anything else before moving on to the next department.
With the Notes & Lists functions removed, though, I can’t verbalize what I want to add to AnyList. I can’t even switch to a different grocery app, as the removal of Notes & Lists affects every third-party app in that category, including Bring!, Todoist, Out Of Milk, and more. Of course, there is one app that still works: Google Keep. With no options left, I tried to switch to Keep.
Google Keep is not an adequate replacement
Keep is terrible for shopping lists: full stop. It’s too basic. Yeah, I can make a general list of things I want to buy, but Keep doesn’t automatically organize them. In order to replicate what I got effortlessly from AnyList, I would need to say, “Hey Google, add eggs to my grocery list,” open up Keep, and then move the new “eggs” entry to a manually-created dairy section of that list. Keep is not even good for this either, as moving items on a list in the app or on the web is a terrible experience, with list items bouncing around, indenting and un-indenting, and just being chaotic. I might as well skip the voice command and Keep altogether and instead just manually add the item to AnyList!
Using Keep in place of AnyList just leaves me even more frustrated.
I am not alone in this frustration, either. Folks on Reddit made it clear that they dislike no longer being able to use voice commands with AnyList and that Keep is not a good replacement. You’ll find similar complaints for Bring!, Todoist, and Out Of Milk. It’s gotten to the point where people with app development skills are trying to work around the problem, like with this project that pulls info from Keep to Todoist. There is a similar project for moving list items from Keep to AnyList, but it has no releases yet, unfortunately.
The whole situation becomes even more infuriating when you understand that Siri and Alexa still support this function. So I could buy a cheap Echo Dot (or an iPhone) and use it just for this one thing. My whole smart home is already built around Google, though, so this would just be silly.
The craziest thing about this, though, is that it’s been over a year since Google took this feature away, and I’m still upset about it. I still get frustrated whenever I add something to Keep, and it just gets dumped to the top of my unorganized grocery list. I get even madder when I stop myself from adding anything to Keep and instead make a mental note to manually add it to AnyList later. I will admit that I’ve also taken to saying, “Hey Google, set a reminder in 10 minutes for me to add eggs to the grocery list.” Then I get that reminder next time my hands are clean and manually add eggs to AnyList. This is the stupidest workaround ever, but at least it works.
Yes, there are clunky workarounds — including using Siri instead — but why should I need to do that? Why take this away in the first place?
No matter how you slice it, it is patently ridiculous that Google offered something so simple and useful and then took it away. I understand that maintaining the API for this function probably took too many resources for it to be worth it, especially when it helps third-party apps like AnyList more than Google itself. But at a certain point, making things worse for your users has got to be a bad idea, right?
My only remaining hope is that the inevitable arrival of Gemini on Google smart speakers and displays will solve this problem. If Google were to open up Gemini extensions to any third-party app that wants access, AnyList could recreate the same functionality it had in Assistant but inside Gemini. Conversely, Google could give Gemini the ability to use its generative AI powers to do a better job at creating and maintaining Keep lists. Either way, I and everyone else who’s upset about Notes & Lists going away would be happy again.
Who knows when that could happen, though. Until then, I’ll just be bitterly jumping through hoops to do something I did for years without a problem before Google decided to make my life less convenient.