Google Assistant enables voice-forward control of Android apps. Using
Assistant, users can launch apps, perform tasks, access content, and more by
using their voice to say things like,
"Hey Google, start a run on
Example App."
As an Android developer, you can use Assistant's development framework and
testing tools to easily enable deep voice control of your apps on
Android-powered surfaces, such as mobile devices, cars, and wearables.
App Actions
Assistant's App Actions let users launch and control Android apps with
their voice.
App Actions enable deeper voice control, enabling users to launch your apps and
perform tasks like:
- Launching features from Assistant
: Connect your app's capabilities to
user queries that match predefined semantic patterns or built-in intents.
- Displaying app information on Google surfaces
: Provide
Android widgets
for Assistant to display, offering inline answers, simple
confirmations, and brief interactions to users without changing context.
- Suggesting voice shortcuts from Assistant
: Use Assistant to proactively
suggest tasks in the right context for users to discover or replay.
App Actions use
built-in intents
(BIIs) to enable these and dozens more use
cases across popular task categories. See the
App Actions
overview on this page for details on supporting BIIs in your apps.
Multidevice development
You can use App Actions to provide voice-forward control on device surfaces
beyond mobile. For example, with BIIs optimized for Auto use cases, drivers
can perform the following tasks using their voice:
App Actions overview
You use App Actions to offer deeper voice control of your apps to users by
enabling them to use their voice to perform specific tasks in your app. If a
user has your app installed, they can simply state their intent using a phrase
that includes your app name, such as
"Hey Google, order a pizza on
Example App."
App Actions supports BIIs that model the common ways users
express tasks they want to accomplish or information they seek, such as:
- Ordering food, booking rides, and other category specific actions.
- Opening a feature of your app.
- Querying for products or content using in-app search.
With App Actions, Assistant can proactively suggest your voice capabilities as
shortcuts to users, based on the user’s context. This functionality enables
users to easily discover and replay your App Actions. You may also suggest these
shortcuts in your app with the App Actions
in-app promo SDK
.
You enable support for App Actions by declaring
<capability>
tags in
shortcuts.xml
. Capabilities tell Google how your in-app functionality can be
semantically accessed using BII and enable voice support for your features.
Assistant fulfills user intents by launching your app to
the specified content or action. For some use cases, you can specify an Android
widget to display within Assistant to fulfill the user query.
App Actions are supported on Android 5 (API level 21) and higher. Users can only
access App Actions on Android phones. Assistant on Android Go does not
support App Actions.
How App Actions work
App Actions extend your in-app functionality to Assistant, enabling users to
access your app's features by voice. When a user invokes an App Action,
Assistant matches the query to a BII declared in your
shortcuts.xml
resource,
launching your app at the requested screen or displaying an Android widget.
You declare BIIs in your app using Android
capability elements
. When you
upload your app using the
Google Play console
, Google registers the
capabilities declared in your app and makes them available for users to access
from Assistant.
For example, you might provide a capability for ordering food in your app. When
a user says,
“Hey Google, order a pizza from Example App,”
the following steps
occur:
- Assistant performs natural language analysis on the query, matching the
semantics of the request to the predefined pattern of a BII. In this case,
the
actions.intent.ORDER_MENU_ITEM
BII matches the query.
- Assistant checks whether the BII was previously registered for your app
and uses that configuration to determine how to launch it.
- Assistant generates an Android intent to launch the in-app destination of the
request, using information you provide in the
<capability>
. Assistant
extracts the parameters of the query and passes them as extras in a generated
Android intent.
- Assistant fulfills the user request by launching the generated Android
intent. You configure the
intent
to launch a screen in your app or to
display a widget within Assistant.
After a user completes a task, you use the
Google Shortcuts Integration Library
to push a dynamic shortcut of the
action and its parameters to Google, enabling Assistant to suggest the
shortcut to the user at contextually relevant times.
Using this library makes your shortcuts eligible for discovery and replay on
Google surfaces, like Assistant. For instance, you might push a shortcut to
Google for each destination a user requests in your ride sharing app for
quick replay later as a shortcut suggestion.
Build App Actions
App Actions build on top of existing functionality in your Android app. The
process is similar for each App Action you implement. App Actions take users
directly to specific content or features in your app using
capability
elements
you specify in
shortcuts.xml
.
When you build an App Action, the first step is to identify the activity you
want to allow users to access from Assistant. Then, using that information,
find the closest matching BII from the
App Actions BII reference
.
BIIs model some of the common ways that users express tasks they
want to do using an app or information they seek. For example, BIIs exist for
actions like ordering a meal, booking a ride, and checking an account
balance. BIIs are the best way to start with App Actions, as they model common
variations of user queries in multiple languages, making it easy for you to
quickly voice enable your app.
Once you identify the in-app functionality and BII to implement, you add or
update the
shortcuts.xml
resource file in your Android app that maps the BII
to your app functionality. App Actions defined as
capability
elements in
shortcuts.xml
describe how each BII resolves its fulfillment, as well as
which parameters are extracted and provided to your app.
A significant portion of developing App Actions is mapping BII parameters into
your defined fulfillment. This process commonly takes the form of mapping the
expected inputs of your in-app functionality to a BII's semantic parameters.
Test App Actions
During development and testing, you use the
Google Assistant plugin
for
Android Studio to create a preview of your App Actions in Assistant for your
Google account. This plugin helps you test how your App Action handles various
parameters prior to submitting it for deployment. Once you generate a preview of
your App Action in the test tool, you can trigger an App Action on your test
device directly from the test tool window.
Assistant also offers built-in capabilities to understand media app commands, like
"Hey Google, play something by Beyonce,"
and supports media controls like
pause
,
skip
,
fast forward
, and
thumbs up
.
Next steps
Follow the
App Actions pathway
to build an App Action using our sample
Android app. Then, continue on to our guide to
build App Actions for your own app
. You can also explore
these additional resources for building App Actions: