14 DAY TRIAL // It’s not a secret that Google isn’t necessarily the biggest fan of Windows 10, and it’s actually something that users have been struggling with for quite a while.
Microsoft’s modern OS push, starting with Windows 8 and including Windows Phone, had a hard time convincing users to stick around, and the lack of dedicated Google apps has already been one major shortcoming.
Of course, Google apps are still nowhere to be seen in Microsoft’s app stores, yet someone has found a way to bring Google Assistant to Windows 10 with a third-party approach.
Hello, Google Assistant!
Developer Melvin Abraham released an unofficial Google Assistant for Windows 10 on GitHub, and you can install it today if you follow a complex tutorial to get the main features working.
And these are actually two big problems.
First of all, getting the app up and running isn’t necessarily the easiest thing you’ll do, though there are instructions online that’ll help you with the whole thing.
And then, not all features of Google Assistant on Android devices land on Windows 10 with this unofficial port, but to be honest, this isn’t necessarily a surprise. So if anything, let’s just be happy it works (though I wouldn’t necessarily be shocked to hear Google decided to block it).
The good news is that you’re getting both text and voice command support for Google Assistant, so you can interact with the assistant in the natural way available on Android too. On the other hand, there’s no listening mode support, which means you need to invoke the assistant manually and you can’t use a wake-up phrase for the whole thing.
There’s hotkey support, and this is good news given the above, as well as light and dark modes to adapt to the rest of the UI on Windows 10. It remains to be seen if Google decides to ban the app, but for now, it’s the only way to get Google Assistant on Microsoft’s desktop OS.