Android Oreo Apps can Better Integrate with Google Assistant

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There’s a lot of changes happening in the new Android Oreo update and we’ve been covering all the new changes that we’ve been able to find. Some are quality of life improvements, others are features we’ve been asking for, and then there are some that make you wonder what took them so long to add to Android. A new feature that we have picked up on is the ability for Android Oreo applications to launch Google Assistant directly from within the application, providing for better integration between Google Assistant and third-party apps built for Android 8.0 Oreo.

Google has been doing a lot of work to expand the functionality of their virtual assistant within and outside of Android. As far as smartphones go, Google Assistant is generally considered the best option available as there are just certain tasks the competition just doesn’t perform well at. However, Google has a lot of work to do in order to get Google Assistant to the level that Amazon’s Alexa is at. There are still some tasks that each do better than the other, but Alexa has more and better integration into 3rd-party services.

So with the update to Android Oreo, applications are now able to launch Google Assistant directly from within the application. Just like we can launch Google Assistant with a long press of the home button or even with a hotword, 3rd-party applications will be able to do this from within the application itself. This change allows the application to create a new task in the activity manager so that that Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK will be set for you to make it a new task.

This new activity will be displayed in a layer on top of other activities, and it shouldn’t be affected by multi-window at all. This shouldn’t be limited to Google Assistant either. Since Android lets you specify a default a default assistant application, you should be able to launch your assistant of choice within the 3rd-party applications that include this feature.