If you like using the Google Assistant but don’t want it to read everything out loud to you then you can finally change that now in the feature’s settings. While some phones mute the voice if your whole phone is on mute, until now there was no setting for it.
As spotted on Google Support by Android Police there is now an option to turn Speech output to ‘hands-free only’ rather than always ‘on’. The toggle isn’t that easy to find, but when you do the Google Assistant will just display the results of your query rather than shout them out for all to hear.
To do it, you need to bring up the Google Assistant, then tap on the Explore compass, then your account icon in the top right, then Settings. From here go to the Assistant tab, then Phone and then Speech output. Then you can change the setting.
As you can see, this option is not exactly front and centre, and until now it was always touch and go as to whether the Assistant would blurt out your answers or keep quiet. Google probably wants you to keep it on to encourage you to have a conversation with your phone more often and for longer, therefore feeding the big G with gallons of delicious user data to improve its services.
Author: Henry Burrell, Phones Editor
Henry is Tech Advisor’s Phones Editor, ensuring he and the team covers and reviews every smartphone worth knowing about for readers and viewers all over the world. He spends a lot of time moving between different handsets and shouting at WhatsApp to support multiple devices at once.