With Snapshot finally dead, there’s a big gap in Google Assistant’s usefulness

While there’s yet to be an official announcement, “Snapshot”, or the Google Now successor that displays useful and intelligently intuitive, and timely cards based on your habits and data, is dead. Last month, Android Police discovered a banner at the top of the service that stated it would be going away soon, and users would be relegated to asking Assistant for things by voice instead.

Now, any and all users whose devices it remained on up until this point have now lost access to it, according to 9to5Google, who no longer see it on their Pixel or Samsung Galaxy phones. I can confirm that on my Pixel 6 Pro, and on my Pixel 4XL, Snapshot has been missing for quite some time, but it’s interesting to see how quickly the company sunset it for everyone else.

What’s really sad about this whole ordeal is that not only was Snapshot incredibly useful and automated compared to having to ask Assistant for things manually and having to determine with your own intuition when you’d need to trigger things, but Google itself created a fullscreen Pixel at-a-glance widget for its devices that was reminiscent of Snapshot. This could have further developed the usefulness of Assistant, but it was never released, and then it was subsequently erased from the company’s plans altogether.

In the comments, I’d ask that you leave your thoughts on the removal of Google Assistant Snapshot, and let me know if you ever even used it. For me, it was useful when I called it up and was invisible when I didn’t need it. Ultimately, it was worth having around, even though I only used it periodically. However, with it gone entirely now, I can’t help but feel that a void has been left in the fabric and DNA of what Assistant offers, and without Snapshot, it can’t be its best self. Let’s hope Google has a plan to fill that gap soon.