If you've ever been embarrassed by your unsilenced Pixel accidentally going off during a meeting or in the theater, Google's got you covered with a simple and potentially even faster way to do silence it than pressing the volume rocker.
As reported by 9to5Google, a teardown of the Google app version 13.34, which is currently in beta, has shown that Google Assistant could add a new way of silencing an incoming call using the Quick phrase “Silence” on the Pixel 6 and possibly even Pixel 7 and 7 Pro. This means just saying the word “Silence” to your Pixel when the phone is ringing, should silence the ringer and leave the call unanswered. This could be a great way to silence spam calls as well.
Right now, the calls on the Pixel 6 can be silenced by pressing the volume button on the side of the phone, or using another clever Google shortcut — “Flip to Shhh” that, when enabled, can silence a call as soon as the phone is flipped screen down.
Google introduced Quick Phrase with the launch of the Pixel 6 in October last year, which dropped the need to say “Hey Google” before certain commands because Google Assistant gained the ability to listen for specific key words other than “Hey Google”. So far with Quick phrase, users have the option to “Stop” or “Snooze” alarms or a timer and “Answer” or “Decline” incoming calls on the Pixel 6, Pixel 6 Pro and the Pixel 6a.
Soon, “Silence” will be another supported phrase, and you'll probably be able to shout out the command to your Pixel 6 and potentially even the Pixel 7 to do just that.
Quick Phrase has a lot more use on Google Assistant-powered smart speakers — without saying “Hey Google” you can skip to the next song, cancel alarms, check the weather, reset the timer and do many other things. On Pixel phones, it has to be manually turned on in the settings under “Google Assistant”. It could take some time for the “Silence” Quick phrase to be rolled out and we don’t know if the company will launch it before or with the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro that is tipped to release on October 13 this year.
Google teased the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro at the Google I/O event back in May. It is set to get the tech giant’s second-gen Tensor chip, which could be much more powerful and make the Pixel 7 one of the best camera phones as well. The next-gen Pixels are also tipped to sport the same cameras seen on the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro.
If this has you seriously considering whether to trade out your Pixel 6 for the new model once it goes on sale, you can check out our full comparison of Pixel 7 vs. Pixel 6 to see what upgrades you can expect to see in the upcoming phones.
Next: Forget 'Hey, Google' — this simple trick lets you combine multiple smart speaker commands.
