Trying Google Assistant for PC

For a long time, I thought that having access to Google Assistant on a PC would be an obvious starter move by Google in order to push it's voice assistant to new devices. Unfortunately, I thought wrong. Google has not released official support for it's Assistant on PC or the web; Which is a real shame, as it is possibly the best voice assistant around as of early 2021.

What's the strangest though, is that Google even decided not to engage in this endeavour despite the fact that Microsoft's Cortana is built into Windows 10 and Amazon's Alexa voice assistant has an an app for pc. So why is Google not only hesitant, but careless about even playing catchup in the PC assistant market?

Well, it's actually an intentional move. Apparently, Google Assistant has been available on PC's for a while, but not your conventional Mac, Windows PC or Ubuntu Desktop; It's around officially only on Chrome OS.

The pandemic has boosted the popularity of ChromeOS due to the cheap accessibility of Chromebooks for Google Classroom K-12. As school was driven online, students bought Chromebooks. It's an easy choice for a sysadmin, Chromebooks are pretty bare-bones with little hardware driving down the cost and simple Linux-based software making app development easier. In fact Chromebooks Linux gene allows it to run Android apps too. Rumours are, Chrome OS is also much easier to control system settings on across all devices as an admin. They target a highly specific audience, but score a relative bulls-eye.

ChromeOS recently overtook MacOS to reach second place in the desktop computer market.

Google wants people to use ChromeOS, Not Windows or MacOS.

But, users of Windows, Macs and Linux Distros need Google Assistant too, after all; Windows is an untapped market for Google Assistant.

But wait!

The great thing about Google Assistant is it's ability to integrate with hundreds of other services. These services are built with the Google Assistant API/SDK, allowing developers to make integrations and devices that talk to the Assistant.

The smartest part of all, is that this API can be used by any user; Which is how Google Assistant Unofficial Desktop Client arrives on the scene.

Google Assistant Unofficial Desktop Client is an app written in JS by open source contributors on Github that uses the Google Assistant API/SDK to add the much needed Google Assistant support to Windows 10.

However, it has drawbacks too. Connecting to your Google Account currently takes some tinkering in the Google Cloud Platform Console, A web-portal where developers can access API keys (fancy passwords) for their applications.

It uses Electron, a framework software designed by Github that allows developers to make Desktop GUI applications out of JS, HTML, CSS and other web technologies.

Does it work?

Yes, it does.

So, I recommend giving it a try.

There are download links here if you'd like to use their installer or the code here if you'd like to build it yourself.

Authentication help is here

Good Luck!