Google Keep coming back for the 12th or 13th time as a notes & lists option in Google Assistant is certainly welcomed. It’s also rolling out now to your Google Assistant-equipped phone after being announced last week in case you needed a heads-up. Before everyone gets ultra excited, just be aware of the fact that Google’s awkward-to-access shopping list through Assistant or Google Shopping or wherever it’s located, is still there. We have a way to get past it, though! Show As you head in to Google Assistant settings and then tab over to “Services” and look for “Notes & Lists,” just know what you are about to get yourself into. If you choose Google Keep as your favorite notes & lists service, you are actually getting a combination effort that involves Google Assistant handling lists. You can see the acknowledgement of that below, where the choice for Google Keep says “Keep and Assistant work together to help you get more done, quickly.” In other words, if you ask Assistant to take a note, it’ll add that note to Google Keep going forward. However, if you want to add something to your shopping list or any other list, that’ll happen through Google Assistant still. Unless we trick it! Above, because I had previously used Google Assistant’s shopping list functionality, no matter how I tried to create a Keep shopping list to replace it was left with an error suggesting that one already existed. Since I really would rather use nothing but Google Keep for both notes and lists, I went searching for a work-around. What I found is that you can either change the name of your Assistant shopping list or delete it, then create a new list by saying “Hey Google, create list in Google Keep.” It’ll ask what you want to call it, to which you reply “Shopping list,” assuming you got rid of the Assistant shopping list. As it takes that, you’ll then be able to add items to your shopping list going forward by saying, “Hey Google, Add beer to my shopping list” and it will default to that Keep list. The only downfall is that if you ask to see your shopping list in Assistant, it won’t show you an easily digestible list and will instead force you to open Keep to see it. But hey, at least all of your notes and lists are in one place. Not bad, right?
 Two weeks after that post, Google removed the shopping list’s integration with Google Keep entirely. It now saves your shopping list to a weird isolated Google Express webapp, which notably has no offline access. Without offline access, I can’t use the shopping list in a number of stores with poor cell signal. Boo Google, this was an awful decision clearly done just to push shoppers toward Google Express. I could rant for a while about how much this decision bugs me. (This also eliminated the only reason I used Keep.) But there’s a fix! Thanks to the magic of IFTTT, you can hijack Google Home’s voice commands and do something else with them instead. I wrote some applets there that save my shopping list items to the Todoist app instead of the Google Express webapp. In the interest of sharing, here they are: Create an IFTTT account, link it to your Google and Todoist accounts, and you’re off. Note that you’ll need to set up both applets to get it to work with more variations on the voice command – IFTTT doesn’t let you specify enough variations in one applet alone. Google Keep used to be the perfect place to store your shopping list items. You could add them via Assistant by voice, and your smart home devices would just know to add them to a note labeled ‘Shopping’. Then, Google decided to mess up a good thing and shift everything over to Google Shopping – a list that was primarily web-based, had no voice functionality, and couldn’t be used offline. That’s right, if you were shopping in the store and were using your list and the cell signal went out due to the store’s roofing choice, you would be stuck standing in the middle of the aisle with no idea where to go next. This happened to me more than once and forced me to go back to making notes by hand or via Keep – foregoing the voice assistance! Now that the company is revamping its bookmarking system with the new Reading List feature, it’s also deciding to throw in a browser-based shopping list experiment for good measure. First discovered by Dinsan at Chrome Story the project, code-named ‘Wall-E’ – yep, like the Pixar film – showed up in a Chromium Bug report as seen below. It will apparently be a Chrome developer flag before long and will allow users to access their groceries as an extension or replacement for the Reading List itself.
You should know that Wall-E – the movie, that is – centers around the loss of humanity through consumerism, so it’s a bit dark that Google decided to go with this codename. In the 2008 film, the last remnants of humanity live aboard a ship on which life is controlled by a corporation and led by complacency. If they’re hoping that we all become robots and lose agency – opting instead to use Google Shopping for everything, then they have a very, very long way to go when compared to Amazon. The last time I ordered anything through Google Shopping, my order never showed up, and I was informed that I wouldn’t be receiving a refund for the error. Either way, such a feature would probably be welcome for many who are beginning to gravitate toward the recently released New Tab Page modules for Shopping, Tasks, Drive, Photos, recipes, and more. I’ll just leave it at this – ever since Google Shopping began placing its claws into the Chrome browser, it’s become the lifeblood and driving force for many of the company’s decisions – for better or worse. The more you buy from Google, the less it has to rely on ad revenue when its big court case comes around! If done properly, I won’t mind so much – after all, if the products I’m recommended end up making my life better, then Google did its job and got paid for it. I just don’t want to see the browsing experience ruined by a bunch of promotions. As Dinsan points out though with the many commits he singles out, this could simply be an experiment where any page related to Shopping data could generate a wishlist or store items for later – just as the New Tab Page shopping module currently does. Regardless, we likely have a while before we get any additional news on this feature, and until we learn more about what Google has planned. If it finds some way to tie Shopping list items into Google Chat ‘Rooms’, into this new browser module, or back into Keep when added via Assistant on a smart home device, I would be elated.
Google Assistant and Nest smart speakers (aka Google Home) make it easy to add items to shopping lists with just your voice. If you don’t want to use Google’s built-in list, you can connect your device to a third-party app. Here’s how. You can simply add things to a shopping list using the Assistant or your Nest speaker by saying, “Okay Google, add milk to my shopping list.” If you have a Google Nest speaker or display, you don’t even need to pull out your phone. Selecting a preferred shopping list is the first step in getting the most out of this feature. Choose a Shopping List App on Google HomeOpen the Google Home app on your iPhone, iPad, or Android device, and tap the “Settings” gear icon in the top section. Scroll down to the “Services” section, and tap “Shopping List.” Navigate to the “Select your notes & lists provider” section, and you will see a few different apps to choose from. Select the app you wish to use. After selecting an app, a pop-up message will tell you that all future notes and lists created with Google Assistant will be visible in the selected app. Tap “Continue.”
The Best Tech Newsletter Anywhere Join 425,000 subscribers and get a daily digest of features, articles, news, and trivia. By submitting your email, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You will be redirected to sign in to the selected app. Follow the steps outlined by your selected app. Once finished signing in, you will be brought back to the “Notes & Lists” page in the Google Home app. Now, whenever saying something like “Okay Google, add milk to shopping list,” the Google Assistant will add the item to your chosen shopping list app. Do I Have to Use One of the Included Notes and Lists Apps?There are only a handful of notes and lists apps that can integrate deeply with the Google Assistant. The difference between the apps listed in the Google Home app and other apps that advertise Google Assistant support is the commands. For apps listed in Google Home, you only need to say, “Okay Google, add milk to shopping list.” Apps without the deep integration require lengthier commands, such as “Okay Google, ask [APP NAME] to add milk to shopping list.” As mentioned above, Google Assistant includes its own basic shopping list. This list is used by default if you don’t select a different shopping list app. The shortcut to Google’s shopping list is only present in the Google Home app on Android devices, not iPhone or iPad. However, the “add to shopping list” commands works with Google Assistant on all devices, and the list itself can be accessed through any web browser at shoppinglist.google.com. If you want to use Google’s built-in shopping list option, open the Google Home app on your smartphone, and tap the “Settings” gear icon in the top section. Scroll down to the “Services” section, and tap “Shopping List.” Navigate to the “Select your notes & lists provider” section. Make sure “Do not sync with other services” (on iPhone and iPad it’s simply “Don’t Sync”) is selected. Now, whenever saying “Okay Google, add [BLANK] to shopping list,” the Google Assistant will add the item to your list at shoppinglist.google.com. |
