How to choose your new Google Assistant voice

At Google I/O 2018, Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai announced on stage that there would be new Google Assistant voices for you to choose from — six to be exact, bringing the total to eight. Before, you’d only be able to choose between a male or female voice, but now you can select a new Google Assistant voice from a whole slew of genders and vocal tones.

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The new choices went live a short time after the announcement, so you might be wondering how to choose your new Google Assistant voice. Well, it couldn’t be simpler, so follow along here, and we’ll walk you through the whole process.

Google Assistant or Google Home?

To pick your new Google Assistant voice, you have to navigate to the Assistant voice settings page. There are two ways to do this: the first is if you only use Google Assistant on your phone, and the second is if you own some form of Google Home hardware, like the Google Home Max. You can use either app, but the steps are different. Let’s navigate to Assistant voice settings using the Google Assistant app first.

To begin, open up the Google Assistant app by holding down the home button on your phone’s nav bar. You should see this:

Click the blue icon at the top right of the Google Assistant box. That will take you to the explore page (see the left screenshot below). Then, click the three dots icon in the top right-hand corner to bring out the menu choices (middle screenshot). From the menu selections, hit Settings. That will take you to the Assistant settings page (see the right screenshot below).

Once you get here, hit the Preferences option, which will bring you to this page:

As you might expect, you tap “Assistant voice” from here, which finally brings you to the new Google Assistant voice options:

Now, if you’re more used to using the Google Home app because you own Google Home hardware, you can use the Google Home app instead to get to the Assistant settings. To use the Google Home app, open it up:

Click the menu “hamburger” icon in the top left corner to slide out the menu:

Hit the option that says “More settings,” and you’ll be taken to this page, the same page we got to through Google Assistant:

Follow the remaining steps listed above, and you’re all set!

Google doesn’t give you much info here on what each voice sounds like. You can run down the list tapping each one, and you’ll hear the voices give a little speech to give you an idea of the gender and tone of voice. But, to make things simpler, here’s a breakdown of each voice’s gender and tone:

• Voice 1 – (Female) – The traditional Google Assistant female voice we are all used to.
• Voice 2 – (Male) – The traditional Google Assistant male voice we are all used to.
• Voice 3 – (Female) – A mid-range tone.
• Voice 4 – (Male) – A mid-range tone.
• Voice 5 – (Female) – A lower mid-range tone.
• Voice 6 – (Male) – A lower mid-range tone.
• Voice 7 – (Female) – A very low-toned voice.
• Voice 8 – (Male) – A very low-toned voice.

Keep in mind that whether you got to this page via the Google Home app or the Google Assistant app, this will change the tone of voice for all your devices. That means any device connected to your Google account — whether it’s your phone, tablet, or Google Home hardware — will feature this new tone. Currently, aside from using different Google accounts for each piece of hardware, there is no way to change the voice for specific devices.

Hopefully, this helps you figure out your new Google Assistant voice! Let us know in the comments which one you like the best.

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