Google Assistant Might Soon Be Able To Turn Off Your Android Phone

Google's smart AI-powered virtual assistant has definitely gotten a lot smarter over the years but there seem to be some simple things it still can't do. One of those is apparently the ability to turn off your phone using just your voice, which does sound (no pun intended) redundant considering there is a power button. It turns out that Google Assistant might gain exactly that feature in Android 12 and precisely because it will be able to commandeer that power button for its self.

Among the many smart assistants available on phones, Google Assistant probably has the most number of activation methods, especially on Pixel phones. There is, of course, the voice command way, presuming it's always alert for the wake phrase. There are also dedicated buttons as well as squeezes on some phones with that hardware feature. You can also swipe up from the screen's corners for those using Android's full-screen gesture navigation.

In Android 12, it's getting yet another activation method, one that requires long pressing the power button. That, however, is also the action that normally pops up the power menu to bring up shut down, restart, and some smart home controls as of Android 11. It was noted by some Android 12 Beta uses that there is no option to power off the phone should you choose to assign the action to Google Assistant.

9to5Google's sleuthing revealed that Android 12 will instead offer two new ways to power off the phone. One is to press the volume up and power buttons together at the same time while. The more interesting method is telling Google Assistant to power off the phone, which you can invoke by long-pressing the power button.

The report notes that the function still isn't activated even if they were able to make the information page come up, so they weren't able to test whether it will power off your phone directly or bring up the old power menu first. It might not even happen at all, considering Google's habits, but, hopefully it will come up with a way for users to conveniently turn off their phones when Google Assistant has taken over the power button.