How to have the Google Assistant on your PC: step by step tutorial

The Google Assistant is available on most mobiles sold in Spain, but if we want to use it on a computer it is only available on Chromebook computers. But what if you want to have it on your computer with Windows, Linux or Mac OS?

Although it is not officially available, there is a project that allows us to have the Google Assistant on our computer. This project is available on Github and although it is not excessively complicated, it does require a series of steps to be followed carefully.

After looking at it and testing that it works correctly in Spanish, we will tell you step by step everything you have to do to have it. If you use English you can go directly to the project and follow the steps, so in that case we leave you the link to the project so you don’t waste a lot of time.

Unofficial Google Assistant Project for PC.

First step, download and install the Google Assistant client on GitHub

The first thing we will have to do is download the unofficial Google Assistant client. This client can be found in the sectionreleases of the project on GitHub. In this section we can download the source code to compile it on our own, but what interests us are the installation files, which is the simplest process.

Google Assistant for PC on GitHub.

In the latest version available, we will choose the one that ends with Snap or AppImage if we use Linux, dmg if we use Mac OS or exe if we use Windows.

The installation is like any other program on the system. In our case we have used the Windows one and it is to press next, next, next. The options do not have any cheating or install anything strange in the process, so in that sense we can rest easy.

After installing it, the Google Assistant window will appear, in a very friendly interface (which integrates with the light / dark theme of the system), but as soon as we carry out the first search it will indicate a difficult to understand message from something from a Google SDK Assistant. What?

Step two: get the credentials

For the application to work it will be necessary that we have aToken, a file that would become a password. The unofficial Google Assistant application is still a visual application, but by itself it does not have the ability to access your Google account. Give this functionality to an applicationit has a cost if the volume of users of the service is high. However, if we create our own account for personal use we will never reach the free limit, making it necessary to follow a few steps.

The first one isCreate an Actions on Google project. We go to the page of the following link and click onNew Project.

It will ask us to name our project and choose the language and country.

Once created, it will take us to the Actions Console. Ignore the buttons and go to the bottom where it says «Are you looking for device registration? Click here«. Well, that, you click.

It will take us to a new window where there will be a button in the center calledRegister Model. Click on it.

We put the product name, our company and type of device. It is irrelevant to functionality, so put what you want.

In section 2 there will be a button calledDownload Oauth 2.0 credentials. Click on it and a file will download.Do not lose sight of this file and save it in a folder where it will not be lost. After downloading it, click on next and save.

Activating access to the Google Assistant API

The next step is to click on this link to go to the Google Assistant API, since our project will need access to it to make the requests we make. From this link we can go to the console. Click onEnable.

Once created, we will go to the menuCredentials and we will click onConfigure consent screen.

We selectExternaland click on next.

InUser support emailYDeveloper contact information we wrote an email.

We save to create and we will return to the main screen. We will appreciate a section calledTest users. Click on Add Users.

Again, add your email to register as a user of your own application.

The last steps

We open the Google Assistant on our computer and click on the gear in the upper left corner, which will take us to settings. There, we will have two menus,Key File Path YSaved Token Path. In the first, click onBrowse, and select the file that we should have saved. Click on Save and it will tell us to restart the application.

After doing so, a small warning window will appear, click on the buttonAutomatically set a Path, it will restart again and a Google window will open in the browser. We select the Google account that we want to use for the assistant and we grant it permissions. A code will appear that we will have to paste.

And we can now make requests to Google, both in the text box and by clicking on the microphone. Now we can invoke the assistant whenever we want by pressing the Windows, Shift and A keys at the same time.

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