During the last year, both Google Now and Siri showed significant improvements in terms of command-recognition accuracy. In terms of reports, the improvements in the former have been higher than those in Apple’s virtual assistant. We here present a few guidelines to use Google Now in the best possible manner.

Google Now, the highly-regarded virtual assistant application for Android handsets, became available for iPhone users last year. Although there were not any reports of serious shortcomings in Siri, Google Now came across as a much sought-after alternative option. In fact, as researches later proved, the latter was slightly more effective in terms of understanding voice commands than Siri was (in certain cases). If you have newly installed Google Now in your mobile, you would find the following tips to operate it handy:

 

1. Viewing only what’s relevant – Google Now lacks Siri’s built-in wit and humor, but it more than makes up for it by serving as a comprehensive pool of information. However, the prospect of scouring through cluttered information cards for what’s important to you is generally a time-consuming one. After the latest update, you can now hide info cards/sections from Google Now, by tapping the right arrow sign on the screen. Going through neat, organized cards would be a lot easier.

2. Frame your important searches as a research – Keeping track of your search history becomes a cinch, when you start using Google Now. Consultants of any mobile app development company would be able to familiarize you with the way each of your searches on the application is arranged as a research topic on it. You can also find out about the links you had clicked on earlier, while looking for certain information.

3. The ‘OK Google’ phenomenon – This has been one of the most convenient factors about Google Now, at least for American users, so far. To provide voice commands on the app, all that you need to do is register your voice, and say ‘Ok Google.’ At times, there might be problems in the assistant understanding heavily accented US English, but an update is expected soon, to get rid of such issues.

4. Getting email notifications – From flight information and travel plans, to hotel bookings and restaurant table reservations – you can get emails for practically everything, from Google Now. You have to, of course, provide enough data to the application, to ensure the accuracy of the mails. Don’t worry, Google would never compromise the confidentiality of your information!

5. Never missing your favorite television shows – That’s right – Google Now can help you with this too. A lot of credit goes to the latest techniques for Android and iPhone app development in India, for incorporating a customized reminder setting in the virtual assistant. If you provide information about your favorite tele shows, the app would automatically ask you whether it should remind you when the next episode would be aired.

6. Provision of getting updated information – The informative research cards of Google Now are all very helpful, but what if you have to search for a large number of topics within a span of few days? You can keep things organized, by tapping on the ‘Remind Me’ button, that’s present on the knowledge graph-accompanied search results. That way, you will be notified whenever updates on the topics you are interested in become available.

7. Messaging with Google Now – Just like Siri, Google Now handles all your messaging requirements in an efficient manner. For sending text messages, the voice command is ‘Send To’, while for emails – you need to say ‘Email to’. Apart from the email recipient(s), you can tell Google Now to include Cc and BCc information too.

8. Personalized image lookup option – If you mostly upload photos on Google Plus, this would come across as a really useful function. You can give voice commands to look for any type/genre (e.g., sunset pictures) of snaps, and Google Now will promptly look up images that match your description, from your collection. At present, this facility is not available for users outside the US though.

9. Making the Google Now dashboard completely customized – Although the app figures out your search preferences and the stuff you are interested in, you can further expedite the process. For instance, if you are a regular investor, you can choose the stocks/securities, whose prices you need to monitor. Similarly, if you wish to check the progress of a football team – you need not go through all the weekend match results. Simply ensure that you have chosen only your favorite match reports to be displayed.

10. Commute sharing option – Google Now goes one up on the regular location-sharing features offered by Siri, and most other GPS-based mobile apps. You can share your commuting information with your contacts on a real-time basis, via Google Plus. In case you are facing transportation problems and/or traffic hassles, such information would serve as early warnings for your friends!

11. Keeping things private – Not many iPhone application development companies would recommend this – but you do have the option of not sharing any of your private information with Google. For this, the web history has to be completely removed, after every search. Remember, if you do opt for this option, most of the above-mentioned Google Now functionalities might become unavailable.

 
 

If Chrome is your preferred web browser on PC, you can integrate the features of Google Now with it as well. For Smart TV owners, connecting the virtual assistant to the same wireless network is also an option. Google Now for iPhone still has a long way to go to emerge as a serious threat to Siri’s popularity, but it does have a host of user-friendly, interesting features.