Google kills Pixel Buds silent gesture to read notifications

It’s been a whirlwind for Pixel Buds users lately, with Google quietly slipping in changes that impact how these handy earbuds play nice with Google Assistant. Earlier this month, we were hit with a tweak that tied the activation of the “Hey Google” feature on Pixel Buds to your phone’s settings.

If you have “Hey Google” disabled on your phone, don’t expect it to work on your buds either. Before this, you could roll with Voice Match on your earbuds, even if you’d told your phone to stay quiet. It was an easy win for hands-free convenience — until Google decided to lock the two together.

Google didn’t stop there, though. Pixel Buds Pro users started noticing something was… off. The “touch and hold” gesture, which let you silently summon Google Assistant to read your notifications, was suddenly on the chopping block.

Over the past few days, some Pixel Buds Pro users found that Google Assistant would now shrug off their gestures, responding instead with a less-than-helpful: “touch and hold will no longer read notifications.” What’s the alternative, you ask? A verbal command: “Hey Google, read notifications.” That’s right, you’ll need to speak up to hear what’s going on, effectively ditching the silent way of keeping up with your alerts.

The catch? If you’re not being alerted to new notifications as they come in, chances are you’ll be barking that command into the void. Not exactly the smooth, seamless experience Pixel Buds owners signed up for.

Google has now come clean and confirmed the change. In a statement, Google says “Assistant will no longer read unread notifications when using the press Assistant feature. Assistant will also no longer read unread notifications automatically and allow you to reply. In order to hear notifications, you can activate Google Assistant and say ‘Read my notifications.’”

While this news is still fresh, it’s clear Google is doing some soul-searching with how notifications are handled on their flagship buds. Here’s hoping they’ve got an even better plan waiting in the wings because for now, it’s a bit of a stumble for users who loved that silent, discreet functionality.

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