One of the best things about Wear OS smartwatches these days is the Google Assistant integration and that goes for the Google Pixel Watch 3 as well. However, if for whatever reason you decide you don’t want to use this incredibly useful feature, just know that you can actually disable it. In fact, turning off Google Assistant on your Pixel Watch 3 is pretty simple. If you aren’t sure how to disable it and you want some help, that’s what this handy little guide is here for.
We’ll walk you through the steps to disable Google Assistant if you decide you simply don’t want it to be active. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that in doing so, you’ll be crippling the watch a little bit. After all, smartwatches are, among other things, meant to give you a hands-free way to interact with tons of smart features. Things you maybe can’t do with your phone because your hands are full. Nevertheless, it’s understandable that not everyone will want to use Google Assistant on their watch. And if you aren’t using it, then there’s not much of a reason for it to be enabled.
It’s also worth mentioning that you can always enable it again if you change your mind. So with that said, let’s dive in.
How to disable Google Assistant on your Pixel Watch 3
Bring up the quick settings menu
You’ll want to start by bringing up the quick settings menu. The watch will walk you through how to get to this upon your first time setting it up. Just in case you forgot though, you simply need to swipe down from the top edge of the display to bring up the quick settings menu.
Tap on settings
Now tap on the settings tile. The settings tile is the button that looks like a little gear icon. Just like on your Android smartphone.
Scroll down to the Google menu
When you open the settings menu, it should put you right at the top, with “connectivity” being the first sub-menu you can open. Scroll down a bit, either by using your finger or the haptic crown, and look for the “Google” sub-menu. Tap on that.
Tap on “Assistant”
This will be the first option in the Google sub-menu. Tap on Assistant to see a handful of options you can enable or disable.
Scroll down and tap on “Turn off Assistant”
In this menu scroll all the way down to the bottom and tap on the button that says “Turn off Assistant.” This will give you a tiny disclaimer about what will happen and what you won’t be able to do if you disable this feature. Now tap on the “Turn Off” button That’s pretty much it. Now it’ll be disabled.
Alternatively, there are some other ways to lessen the Google Assistant interaction if you don’t want to turn it off completely.
Turn off the wake word
If you still want to use Google Assistant on your Pixel Watch 3, but don’t want the wake word to be active, you can turn this off to limit the interaction so that it won’t activate without you manually trying to engage the Assistant. In the same menu where you disabled the Google Assistant feature, there are three other toggles you can play with. The first one is to turn off the Hey Google wake word. If you disable this toggle, then you won’t be able to activate the Assistant when saying this.
It also means that it won’t randomly activate anytime something that sounds remotely similar is said. This doesn’t happen often, but it can happen. If you do turn this off, you’ll want to make sure that the toggle just below this is turned on. This toggle controls pressing and holding the side button to bring up Google Assistant. You can disable this as well and still use the Google Assistant feature. However, you’ll now have to access it by opening the app drawer and tapping on the Assistant app. That might be preferrable to you, but if you want ease of use, leave this toggle enabled.