Google Now, the context-aware digital assistant on your device that does just about everything from telling you when to leave for a meeting before traffic builds up to recommending a new restaurant to reminding you that your favourite football team is on top of the Premier League table is getting smarter by the day. With Android Marshmallow arriving later in the day, it is bound to even get really good at what it does best while its listening capabilities got a whole lot better recently. Now, Now (:-) ) works even you don’t have any signal bars as well.
Over the last few days, Google Now users on Android have been noticing a subtle change in Now’s behaviour. While Google Now would always respond to the “Ok Google” hot word anytime regardless of whether one was connected to the internet or not, that was pretty much all it could do. Unless you were online, you’d be stuck with information cards that Now had fetched the last time you were online. Something like this:
That is no longer the case. Google Now will allow users to set alarms, use the flashlight and do several other things that don’t need you to be connected to the internet. All it will need to do is download a language pack when you’re online for offline speech recognition and you’re good to go. This should happen automatically but in case it doesn’t then just try searching for anything with your device disconnected from networks and you’ll get the prompt to install the language. Connect to a network and do so and enjoy.
