Google Now can now send WhatsApp messages by voice

Voice assistants are all the rage these days, and ever more people are getting over their embarrassment at talking at their phones. Cognizant of this, Google has finally integrated WhatsApp into its search tool for Android devices, so you can now ask your phone aloud to send a certain phrase to one of your contacts, and even do the same thing for Telegram, WeChat, Viber, and NextPlus.

The process couldn’t be simpler (although at the moment it only detects phrases in English, pending further updates). Click the microphone button on your device’s search bar or use the trusty old “Ok, Google” (if you have it activated) to make your phone start listening, and then say “Send WhatsApp to [name of person],” where that name corresponds to that of the contact you want to send the message to. Keep in mind that it will extract the recipient info from your contacts book, so the name should be the one that appears there rather than that person’s WhatsApp name.

That done, it will ask you for your message, which you can dictate with no limits on the length beyond those of WhatsApp itself. It will then ask you to confirm your message with a yes or no to proceed with the sending. This might at first seem like a trivial update, but this new feature used with Google Now on a smartwatch could mean that you end up sending messages to your contacts by talking to your wrist. Like Michael Knight!