How to Enable Google Allo’s Built-in Translate and Assistant Auto-Complete Features

We may earn a commission for purchases made using our links.

Allo is Google’s chat app integrated with the Google Assistant. Google Assistant in Allo lets yousearch within conversations, play games, tell jokes, and more. The other person in your conversation can see this too and even join in. You can also talk to the Google Assistant in a private chat if you want, meaning that in effect you actually have the same Google Assistant within the Google Allo app as you do when you hold the home button.

Google Allo contains many features, but there is certainly more it could do with Google’s capabilities powering it. We recently received Google Allo for Web, but that’s about it. What about Google’s translation services? What about auto-completion? Surely Google has the power to add these features to their application?

Well as it turns out, they did! You will need root access and a root enabled file explorer, but you can actually enable automatic translation of messages, powered by Google Translate, as well as auto-completion in conversations with the Google Assistant! I recommend using MiXplorer for a free, root-enabled file explorer.

You will need root access via Magisk or SuperSU to follow this tutorial! There are other changes that can be made in the files we are changing, but be careful. No other settings in this file are guaranteed to work.

Enabling Google Allo’s Built-in Translation and Assistant Auto-Complete Features

We will be editing a Google Allo configuration file located in /data/data/com.google.android.apps.fireball/shared_prefs/PhenotypePrefs.xml. You will need to navigate to this folder in your root enabled file explorer. We will be changing some boolean values in this file. Booleans are strings which take “true” or “false” values.

Step 1

Open PhenotypePrefs.xml and locate the following strings.

ConversationUI__enable_message_translation

Compose__enable_assistant_message_autocompletion

Step 2

Change the value=”false” on both strings to value=”true”.

Step 3

Next, force stop Google Allo and test out the features!

Demonstration

We tested it out here on XDA, and spoke in four languages to test auto translation. First, we used French, then German, then Latvian, and then Irish. It failed to properly translate Latvian and Irish, but that’s understandable as they are not widely spoken languages. We can also see that auto-completion when messaging the Google Assistant is now enabled!

Go check it out, and have a look at PhenotypePrefs.xml if you’re interested in seeing if you can find any other hidden features! If you find any, let us know in the comments. Be careful when editing this file however, as you may break something in the app if you change something you aren’t sure of!