Google seems to be dropping two options from its Assistant’s reminder-setting capabilities. It’s ditching help for assignable reminders — “remind Anna to usher in the trash cans this morning” — and location-based ones — “remind me to name Becca after I get to the workplace.” Google didn’t announce both change, as an alternative opting to bury one in a support page and one other in a pop-up within the Assistant app. Each options nonetheless work however evidently gained’t for for much longer.
Chalk this one as much as the most recent in a protracted, lengthy historical past of Google doing a horrible job of turning Reminders into a good remotely helpful system.
The listing of chaotic Google product choices is lengthy, however I submit that none make much less sense than Reminders. You may set reminders in Google Calendar, which sync with the Google Duties app. That is good and proper conduct! However it’s also possible to set reminders with Google Assistant, which reside in a completely completely different ecosystem and don’t seem in Duties. Google Preserve is possibly probably the most chaotic: you possibly can add a reminder to a observe, and it’ll present up alongside your Assistant-created reminders however not in Google Duties. They’ll additionally seem in a devoted part of the Preserve app, however none of your different reminders are there.
There may be exactly one place to see all of the reminders in your Google account and that’s the Google Calendar app for iOS and Android. However even this has its oddities. You may create a reminder within the Google Calendar app, which reveals up alongside Assistant reminders and at reminders.google.com, or create a activity, which seems precisely the identical but reveals up in Google Duties however not different locations. Within the Calendar internet app, you possibly can solely create and see Duties reminders, which don’t present up the place the opposite reminders do.
The truth that Calendar will get it so near proper is all of the extra infuriating. It means there’s nothing retaining reminders aside apart from Google simply not placing them collectively. Usually, all you possibly can actually hope for is that your gadget will ping you on the proper time and that you just by no means really need to have a look at a listing of every part you may have happening.
Inside this nonsensical ecosystem, Google can’t even make its Reminders options match. Assistant could also be shedding its location-based reminders, however your Preserve reminders can nonetheless be triggered by your GPS pin. Google Duties and Calendar reminders may by no means be location-based, for some motive.
The glass-half-full learn on Google’s current adjustments can be that they’re the primary sign shortly that anybody at Google really remembers reminders exist. And, as the corporate continues to work on bringing its merchandise collectively extra coherently, it’s potential {that a} challenge is underway to lastly make reminders make sense: 9to5Google spotted a new feature called “Memory” final yr that could possibly be the ultimate home for all of your bookmarks and reminders.
However I wouldn’t maintain your breath. Google has intermittently expressed curiosity in making reminders work, most not too long ago in 2018 when it relaunched Google Duties alongside an enormous Gmail redesign. The app felt like a good start, however it was clear Google had extra work to do. Within the 4 years since, Google has executed roughly none of that work.
It’s clear that Google sees Assistant because the true heart of its ecosystem, each for reminders and for its complete ambient-computing challenge. Which might be fantastic, actually, if the corporate would really do the (comparatively minor) work of connecting the remainder of the ecosystem.
Right here’s hoping that Google is paring down its Reminders options because it plots a strategy to carry the entire system collectively after which add a few of these options again. Till then, I’ll hold setting reminders with Siri. It could hear me flawed half the time, however not less than I do know the place to search out issues.
