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New Guest Mode in Google Assistant Like Chrome’s Incognito Mode

By Laura Tucker
Google Assistant Guest Mode Featured

Voice assistants can be useful for helping out in so many situations, from naming songs to forecasting the weather to answering trivia questions. But there’s also one major drawback to using them – a lack of privacy with your information. Google Assistant Guest Mode changes that, keeping your information private and not saving it to your Google account.

Google Assistant Guest Mode

This new feature is being compared to Chrome’s Incognito Mode. That feature allows you to browse without records being kept of your interactions. It’s not kept locally and not kept by Google.

Google Assistant Guest Mode works similarly. Once Guest Mode is turned on, whether you’re using it on a smart speaker or your mobile phone, your interactions with the voice assistant won’t be saved to your account. However, you also aren’t getting what Google refers to as the “full, personalized Google Assistant experience.”

Google Assistant Guest Mode Home

Personalized results won’t be shown for your inquiries when you’re in Guest Mode. This means you won’t be able to work with your contacts, calendar, or emails from within Assistant. What you will have access to is controlling your smart home devices, getting answers to trivia, music playback, news, weather, etc.

It should also be noted that while Google Assistant isn’t saving your interactions with it when you have Guest Mode turned on, any other apps included in your interaction may still be storing your information. If you ask Assistant to look up directions and it uses Google Maps, that app can still be retaining the information from your request.

The new feature also works well with your first instincts of what “Guest Mode” means. It’s a great way for guests to your home to use your Google Home smart speaker. Your guest can play music, get a weather update, etc., and it won’t be saved and won’t be personal. This means their personal requests won’t be saved to your account.

Also read: Google Fails to Impress with Google Assistant at CES 2020

Is Guest Mode Useful?

Whether Google Assistant Guest Mode is useful for you depends on what you’re looking for out of the voice assistant. Basically, it comes down to deciding whether your privacy or using all of Google Assistant’s features is important to you.

Google Assistant Guest Mode Iphone

Having your guests use it would be secondary, as you could have them use it whether or not you use it. Then again, so could you. You could choose to only turn it on when you’re doing something you don’t want saved, which puts us back to comparing it to Chrome’s Incognito Mode again.

Google Assistant Guest Mode is available now. Perhaps you want to try it yourself before deciding how you will be using it. Maybe it will also help you to learn some reasons you should use Incognito Mode while browsing.

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Laura Tucker Avatar
Laura Tucker
Laura has spent more than 20 years writing news, reviews, and op-eds, with the majority of those years as an editor as well. She has exclusively used Apple products for the past 35 years. In addition to writing and editing at MTE, she also runs the site’s sponsored review program.

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