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Smart Compose – Google’s AI and machine learning implementation of autocomplete in Android and Gmail made its way to Google Docs last year so users would be able to quickly and efficiently complete comments and cut back on wasted time. Not only that, but the feature also helps reduce grammatical and spelling mistakes. Through intelligent recommendations, they save the day as much as Grammarly ever did.
Now, that same technology is finally making its way to several other Workspace apps – namely Google Slides, Sheets, and Drawings – completing the bundle of popular services (Well, Drawings doesn’t seem too popular these days)! All you’ll have to do is highlight something in any one of these document types and create a comment via the Insert menu or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+M on your keyboard. Alternatively, Google has placed a nice comment and suggestion icon to the right of documents, which makes this more visual.
As you type, you’ll begin to notice light grey text appear to the right of your cursor. These are Google’s suggestions for what it thinks you want to say. If it’s correct, tapping the ‘Tab’ key, as shown above, will autocomplete the sentence on your behalf. If you’re not already using this in Gmail, Android, and elsewhere, you really ought to be. It’s a serious time saver!
Smart Compose is already rolled out to all Workspace users that fall under any of the tiers found below and is turned on by default, but if for any reason you’re not seeing it, just visit the Tools menu and then click on Preferences. From there, you can click ‘Show Smart Compose suggestions’, and then confirm your changes with ‘Ok’. If you’re a Workspace admin, you can also visit your admin dashboard and go to Apps > Google Workspace > Drive and Docs > Features and Applications > Smart Compose in order to check your settings.
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