In the past, I’ve reviewed headphones such as the JBL Everest 710GA, Bose QuietComfort 35 II, and most recently the Beoplay H4 2nd Gen. All three of these headphones have one special feature in common, support for Google Assistant built-in.
What does that entail? For Assistant-enabled headphones, it gives quick access to the Assistant, but mainly it allows you to hear your notifications read aloud to you and reply using your voice. It’s a very convenient little feature to have on your headphones, but if you’re like me, you don’t always use Bluetooth headphones.
I have a collection of wired and wireless headphones and oftentimes I find myself using the wired pairs. On those occasions, it would be fantastic to have access to more Assistant features besides holding down the button to give commands.
The good news is, Google has been rolling out Assistant integration to wired headphones recently. If you’ve plugged in a pair within the past couple of weeks you may have already seen the pop-up asking you to set this up. However, if you’re like me, you probably dismissed this because you were more concerned with listening to music or taking a phone call at the time.
Fortunately, you can still enable the Assistant integration from Assistant settings. To do this, open the Home app on your phone, tap on your profile photo in the top right-hand corner, select Assistant settings, Devices, and scroll all the way to the bottom to find “Wired headphones.”
From here, you can toggle on “Get help from Google” and then choose which apps you want to get spoken notifications from. Finally, if you want to get more personal results, such as communicating with your calendar without unlocking your phone, you need to enable one last setting.
Head back into Assistant settings, personal results, and flip the toggle for “On headphones.” Now, when you ask for info from your calendar you won’t be forced to unlock your phone.
