Fan-made website shows how powerful ‘OK Google’ really is

By Julian Chokkattu June 29, 2016

OK Google Data — Kaspars Grinvalds/Shutterstock

If you have the Google app on your iOS or Android device, chances are you’ve tapped the little mic icon in the search bar to issue voice commands. On Android, you can trigger these commands just by saying “OK Google” from the home screen and — if your device supports it — when the screen is off as well.

But beyond the usual queries like “What’s the weather?” and “How old is President Obama?” it can be hard to keep track of exactly what kinds of things you can do just by saying “OK Google.” A developer under the name Kitze is trying to keep things simple with a new website, ok-google.io, which lists almost every voice command you can use.

Kitze, whose website is now No. 1 on Product Hunt, says he got annoyed whenever he saw posts that offered a “complete list of Google Now commands.” That’s when he decided to take matters into his own hands and build a website that aims to be the one-stop reference site for every OK Google command. And it’s more than that — the website is fluid, animated, and aesthetically pleasing.

Of course, if you ask Google to show voice commands, it will, but it’s no where near as comprehensive as this. There are more than 150 commands, with more than 1,000 variations. The website has a list of categories on the left, and each are broken down in the main column. You can peruse through commands ranging from time, people and relationships, and weather, to ones that control your device, access your Gmail, and more.

What’s better is that more commands are on the way — in a future version, Kitze hopes to add in an easy way for anyone to contribute, support for multiple languages, and perhaps even a list of commands for Alexa, Siri, and Cortana. The project will also be open source soon.

The need and popularity of this kind of a list underlines the problem with current voice assistants — it’s an issue that many companies are tackling with artificial intelligence. Until we can have a completely two-way conversation with digital assistants, we’ll always have to keep a site like this bookmarked.

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Julian Chokkattu

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Julian is the mobile and wearables editor at Digital Trends, covering smartphones, fitness trackers, smartwatches, and more…

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