How to silence Google Assistant responses on your Android phone

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

When your next appointment is, you are sitting in your office to find out. When my next appointment is, you pick up your phone and murmur quietly, and then, loud enough to be heard over the entire room, your Google Assistant announces.

You no longer have to hide under your desk. It is now possible to silence the voice output of the Google Assistant and only see the answers to your questions on your phone. Here is how to set it up.

To get to your settings, you need to get to your Google Assistant. You can either do it one way or the other.

• Use your voice by long-pressing on your power button or saying “Hey, Google” or “OK Google” and say “Open Assistant.” Or...
• Go to Settings > Apps > Assistant > See all Assistant Settings

Once you're in your assistant settings page.

• Scroll down to Assistant voice & sounds, look for Speech output and select Phone
• Here you can choose how much talking your Assistant will do. Select None (unless hands-free)

• Go to the Google Assistant managing page.
• Select “Assistant voice & sounds.”
• Select “Phone” at the bottom of the page.
• Select “None” and you’ll silence your Assistant (unless you’re in hands-free mode).

You're done! From here on, you can either type in or speak your requests, and it will silently offer you whatever help it can provide.

The article was originally published on August 27th, and has been updated to account for changes in the operating system.