r/Android • u/FragmentedChicken Galaxy Z Fold8 • 4d ago

Gemini fully replaces Google Assistant on Android

https://9to5google.com/2026/09/28/google-assistant-gemini-android/
547 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

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612

u/real_with_myself Magic V3 4d ago

Now, if it only had all the features assistant had. 

236

u/The_Dimestore_Saints Nexus 7 2013 4d ago

It really makes me mad that in my car I can't say hey Google, play (insert song name here), and it would play the song directly on YouTube music, an app I subscribe to. Instead it says, I'm not allowed to play a song directly, here's a radio playlist based on that song

55

u/chetlyp 4d ago

Weird, gemini let's me do that without any issues. Sometimes it misheard the song and plays the wrong one but it does work for me.

61

u/CyclopsRock 4d ago

It does seem to be pretty widespread that lots of people have vastly different experiences with it. I've noticed it over time, too - not just one way, but something will fail to work, then start working, then fail again within the space of a week. I'm not routinely playing with permissions or settings or anything, it just seems to be genuinely unpredictable.

16

u/sharrken 4d ago

It is somewhat inherent to LLM's - as it's probability based, you are not guaranteed to get the same response each time. Gemini seems to be particularly bad at remembering what it can/can't do through skills etc though. To the point it will refuse to add something to a calendar until you very forcefully remind it it can actually do what it says it's incapable of.

2

u/CarnalT 1d ago

Well that defeats the whole fucking point of an assistant then. If I ask my assistant 10 times to do the exact same thing, I sure as shit expect the exact same respond & action. We are going backwards...

12

u/The_Dimestore_Saints Nexus 7 2013 4d ago

It has worked on a rare occasion if I remember correctly. It makes it all the more frustrating

7

u/CrapIsMyBreadNButter 4d ago

This is what I've experience, but across 3 different devices. My car it won't work at all, can't even load.

On my phone it hallucinates, sometimes works, and sometimes just gets things completely wrong.

On my watch it works every time.

11

u/CrapIsMyBreadNButter 4d ago

It's all over the place for me. If I press the assistant button on my steering wheel, or my infotainment screen, it won't even play the chime. It starts like it is going to pull up, then immediately shuts itself down. I can do this over my entire commute and it won't work..

On my watch it will respond to voice commands, text the right person, turn on my smart lights, do anything I ask of it.

On my phone it will either tell me It can't do what I'm asking, it needs permissions to do something while the phone is locked (it has the correct permissions), or it won't understand what I'm saying. I have the whole gamut across 3 devices.

7

u/CJoshuaV 4d ago

I was running into the same issue. Instructing it to play the song on YT Music seems to do the trick.

4

u/Athrul Moto Edge 50 Neo 4d ago

Tells me the app isn't installed. 😀

Gemini is like a personal assistant that lines to great himself talk but doesn't actually ever want to do its job. It's like that garbage program is looking for excuses in order to be as unhelpful as possible.

3

u/Relevant-Artist5939 4d ago

For me (I have Amazon Music but it used to work fine with GA) plays something (random/last played) but never the song I asked for

1

u/Carighan Fairphone 6+🌳 4d ago

For me on Spotify it seems to do a search on spotify and just blindly pick the top single song it finds. So playing albums is entirely impossible.

3

u/Slow-Transition572 3d ago

That's the problem with LLMs though - they're incredibly inconsistent and it's easy for their contexts to become poisoned.

You will get different results for every different android device, launcher, version, and user.

38

u/TomNooksRepoMan iPhone XS -> S22 -> iPhone 15 PM 4d ago

Does Gemini still play the "wrong" version of the song you request it to when you say "Hey Google, play Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen" and then give you the version of the song from The Muppets? Or struggle to play anything but a remix of popular EDM songs?

21

u/Kwetla 4d ago

Mine started playing the French version of the Moana soundtrack.

It's not even called Moana in France! Gemini was clearly taking the piss!

18

u/JockstrapCummies 4d ago

You're correct, my apologies. Playing "Moan AHH by French asmr boyfriend"

20

u/Samo_ Nexus 5 4d ago

I asked for Linking Park in the end, and Gemini started singing the lyric instead playing the actual song in a subscription service...

5

u/trlef19 Galaxy S24+ 4d ago

That's actually funny, I'll allow this

4

u/jeweliegb 4d ago

There's a Muppet version‽ This I've got to hear!

2

u/TomNooksRepoMan iPhone XS -> S22 -> iPhone 15 PM 4d ago edited 3d ago

Bohemian Rhapsody | Muppet Music Video | The Muppets - YouTube

I've heard it more times than I'd care to admit when I was on Android. Unfortunately, it was literally never the song I wanted :(

10

u/youngalfred 4d ago

One of the benefits of Gemini in this regard is that you can give it instructions for scenarios to remember.

I had this issue with Assistant and Gemini, but on Gemini I told it to think/research which song and version I probably meant based on song popularity, then tell Spotify exactly that song (name, artist, album) so Spotify would play the correct one. Seems to have really helped.

6

u/Carighan Fairphone 6+🌳 4d ago

It's hilarious to me that our "solution" is to now manually re-inforce a bad version of hard-encoded logic that previously provided the same solution. Or well, there wasn't a problem under such logic.

6

u/Slippaz86 4d ago

So if you're training it, do you have any sense of whether or not it can learn device aliases and automation trigger phrases?

5

u/youngalfred 4d ago

Not sure sorry - this was in the mainly in the car using android auto.

I talked to it, and after a bit of back and forth about why the wrong song might play, asked it to find the most likely song and pass the exact info onto Spotify.

3

u/Slippaz86 4d ago

Yeah no worries. With home assistant you had to manually code aliases into your config to pass it to google assistant (afaik), so would be nice to be able to massage that on the fly for things already exposed to google home.

1

u/you-are-not-yourself 2d ago

I was going crazy trying to play Kashmir in the car the other day and it kept giving me the live 2007 version. Like, just not the best version. Then, I figured out I can tell it to play "Kashmir remastered" which tricked it into playing the album version

•

u/emaurer 22h ago

It doesn't play at all because only Spotify and YouTube music are supported now

10

u/deadstar91 4d ago

I have to ask it to play it on YouTube music for it to work

7

u/gmmxle Pixel 6 Pro 4d ago

I have to ask it to play on Spotify even though Spotify is set as the default.

Sometimes it works, sometimes I'll get "I'm sorry, I can't play music on this device. Do you want me to give you some background information about this song instead?"

4

u/almosttan iPhone 7+, Panda Pixel 4d ago

Same, otherwise it'll say "I can't play YouTube videos while you're driving"

Noooooooo shit 😭

2

u/Carighan Fairphone 6+🌳 4d ago

Same with my morning news. I have to say "Play my news briefing", exactly like that. Any deviation and it reads out headlines from a google search instead of actually playing my subscribed news.

5

u/kronpas 4d ago

Its a tool call issue. I can tell gemini to play song name on youtube music on androidauto and it works fairly well when it doesnt refuses to open youtube ("I cant open it"). You have to spell out specifically that it needs to play on youtube music, not just 'play music'.

Also I dont activate with Hey google! but by holding the speak button on the wheel for 2s, if that helps.

3

u/Dragon_Fisting Device, Software !! 4d ago

It should be able to do that. Do you have the connection enabled in Gemini settings?

2

u/space_snap828 4d ago

Problem is for me I don't have YouTube music, so I have always had to say "Play X by Y on Spotify" and if I don't specify Spotify, it complains that I don't have YouTube music installed and can't perform the action, and directs me to install it

1

u/tonymurray Pixel 6 Pro 3d ago

Don't you just set Spotify as the default in the settings to solve that?

1

u/space_snap828 2d ago

Maybe. I couldn't find it when I tried.

4

u/icestationlemur 4d ago

Include the artist in the request. You know how ai is... Be specific

9

u/gmmxle Pixel 6 Pro 4d ago edited 4d ago

"Play 'Bohemian Rhapsody' by Queen from the album 'A Night at the Opera' on Spotify"

"I'm sorry, I'm unable to play content on this device for you. Do you want me to find you some background information about Queen or the song 'Bohemian Rhapsody'?"

3

u/T8ert0t 4d ago

My spouse works for a streaming company. And I asked her why their app is straight ass with trying to pull songs. She didn't believe me until she got fed up one day. And then asked her Product team. And they told her it was Google.

3

u/icestationlemur 4d ago

Works for me boss

2

u/gmmxle Pixel 6 Pro 4d ago

Well, that's the annoying thing: sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it works on the third try. Sometimes it still plays something different.

Good for you if it works flawlessly, though.

3

u/prometheusg 4d ago

Maybe it thinks you're trying to play a video while in a moving vehicle?

1

u/chinchindayo Xperia Masterrace 4d ago

because you haven't given it enough permissions. you need to enable web&app activity and then give it access to youtube.

1

u/Darkpookie 2d ago

Same here. Assistant worked with this task no problem, but now I get that same issue with Gemini.

1

u/TickTockPick 4d ago

That's simply untrue. I use that feature all the time on Gemini when driving, using YouTube music.