How to silence Google Assistant responses on your Android phone

Mute your Assistant in public

by Barbara Krasnoff

Mar 15, 2022, 3:41 PM UTC

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

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You’re sitting in your office and decide to find out when your next appointment is. You pick up your phone and murmur quietly, “OK Google, when’s my next appointment?” And then, loud enough to be heard over the entire room, your Google Assistant announces, “Next up, you have an appointment with your urologist on September 3rd at 9AM.”

You don’t have to hide under your desk anymore. Google has now made it possible to silence all Google Assistant voice output and only show the answers to your questions on your phone. Here’s how to set it up.

First, you need to get to your Google Assistant settings. You can do it one of two ways:

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 None and you’ll silence your Assistant (unless you’re in hands-free mode)

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Go to the Google Assistant managing page.

And you’re done! From here on, you can either type in or speak your requests to Google Assistant, and it will silently offer you whatever help it can provide.

Update March 15th, 2022, 11:40AM ET: This article was originally published on August 27th, 2019, and has been updated to account for changes in Android.

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