Taking and Sharing Screenshots Returns to Google Assistant

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A feature once present in Google Now on Tap finally makes its way into Google Assistant – the ability to take and share screenshots. What once felt like a feature regression should now make the Google Assistant service feel more at home with fans of Now on Tap.

Google Assistant – Now with Screenshots!

Google touted their advancements in artificial intelligence for much of 2016, culminating in the company introducing Google Assistant during I/O 2016. Though Google Assistant would not officially launch on any products until several months later, users began to experiment with the product when they discovered a method to unofficially enable the service on unsupported devices.

Fast forward several months, and we now have Google Assistant available on the Google Pixel devices, within Google Home, through Google Home, and soon several Android TV models. Even Android Wear 2.0 running devices will receive support for Google Assistant, though we’re not entirely convinced about the efficacy of Assistant on a smartwatch. But despite several announcements integrating additional third-party services and opening up third-party development via Actions on Google, Google Assistant has been lacking many basic features no matter what platform it is accessed from.

The issues present with Google Assistant on the Google Home aren’t so pronounced when accessing Assistant from a smartphone, but they still exist. At first, users enjoyed Google Assistant on their Google Pixel devices for the pure novelty of the bot – though some users were alarmed by the fact that Assistant was replacing Google Now on Tap. Those users quickly realized that the service was missing many key features that were once present in Google Now on Tap. One of those features is the ability to quickly take and share screenshots. Fortunately, though, it appears that this feature is now showing up in Google Assistant. Several of our writers who own the Google Pixel can now confirm that they are seeing buttons to take a screenshot within Google Assistant.

Here’s hoping that those rumored changes to allow for text input in Google Assistant are next to arrive.