Wow, I am super psyched right now! As you all know, one of my favourite features to come to mobile devices this year was Motorola’s Touchless Controls. This feature allowed you to truly interact with your phone hands free. Google later implemented something similar in their Google Experience launcher but the hotword, “Okay Google,” only worked when on the home pages. Well it appears that that limitation has now been lifted as the “Okay Google” hotword will now work basically everywhere.
The new functionality will come to devices via an update to the Google Search app and the Google Play Services. You also need to have a device running Android 4.3+ for the feature to work. Once your apps are updated you’ll have to enable the feature in the Google Now settings and enable Audio History. Once it’s all said and done you’ll be able to use the Okay Google hotword from any screen, even your lock screen. Basically as long as you screen is on the hotword will work. It also appears that the hotword might work when the screen is off but the phone is charging but I can’t confirm that quite yet.
Now the bad-ish news. Updating the apps don’t appear to automatically enable this new feature. Both of my apps are up to date but I still don’t have the option to turn this feature on. In my digging some have commented that this feature needs to be rolled out to each account individually so it might take a little time before it hits your device. Nevertheless, I’m stoked and can’t wait to try it!
If you get it up and running on your phone be sure to let us know! And if you want to see a video of it in action the guys over on Droid-Life have a little something. Hit the link to check it out.
