Google Assistant will be sunset in waves starting from 4th September 2026 with Gemini replacing it. The company has begun emailing users confirming the upcoming change.
Once Gemini replaces Assistant on your device, there’s no way to switch back to the legacy option on the device in question.
Gemini’s rollout includes phones, tablets, Wear OS devices, headphones, earbuds, and phone-based Android Auto.
Existing Google Home devices, Google TV, and cars with built-in Android Auto will continue to feature Assistant.
Assistant first debuted in 2016 as part of the defunct messaging app Allo and the Google Nest voice-activated speaker. Its discontinuation ends a 10-year run.
Gemini reaches a billion users, but how many opted in?
Google announced that Gemini has reached 1 billion monthly active users just days after Assistant’s retirement date was confirmed.
However, a meaningful chunk of the growth appears to line up with forced defaults on existing Android hardware rather than organic adoption.
Google claims the figure refers specifically to the Gemini app and does not include users from other channels like AI Mode.
The claim is a little deceptive, as Gemini has become a passive default with its deep integration into the Android platform, meaning when users perform tasks with “Hey Google,” Gemini opens automatically rather than Assistant.
The company did not disclose metrics like daily active users, paid subscriber numbers, or user retention rates.
Gemini struggles where Assistant didn’t
The move has proved controversial online, with continued reports that Gemini struggles with tasks that Assistant handles natively.
Assistant Routines are not supported under Gemini, meaning if you have smart home functions attached to these shortcuts, they will no longer function from your phone.
Voice control to play music and videos is also unreliable with Gemini where it functions reasonably well from Assistant.
If you regularly use Routines, reminders, and other Assistant smart home features, it’s worth checking they work with Gemini before the update hits.
Further developments that add functions are typically deployed as an extension of the app rather than a native feature, but it’s an questionable move from Google to deploy Gemini as a replacement before it has feature parity.
2 comments
Tony Austin
While Google has offered some outstanding products and services to us all, it also displays a sad, unprofessional approach of chopping and changing, announcing a product then decommitting it several years later.
For example, early this century I decided that I needed to do some blogging. So I selected Google’s Blogger.com and used that quite happily, posting Writing quite a few articles including images (mainly technical stuff), and was flabbergasted about 5-10 years to discover that in many my blog posts all the carefully-crafted had disappeared. Google explained that they had changed the underlying storage architecture and I would have to edit all of those posts and insert all of the images again — a totally impractical imposition.
In terms of Google Assistant, I’ve been using it for some years now to quickly do things like searching for crossword clue results and set alarms. such as “Hey Google set alarm for 7.30pm.” which typically took only a few seconds.
Now, with Gemini, those same prompts can take 10, 20, 30 seconds, even longer. I actually prompted Gemini to explain this, and the response was effectively: “Too bad, this is the way it’s going to be.”
Scott Hunt
Agreed Tony, it often feels like they discontinue services right as they get good.