A SMARTER ASSISTANT

1.

We’re big fans of Google Assistant. But let’s be honest: all that “Hey, Google” uttering can get irksome after a while.

That’s where the Pixel’s Quick Phrases feature comes into play: Quick Phrases lets you activate your Assistant and grab its attention without having to say that insanity-inducing phrase over and over. The catch, though, is that it won’t work until you find the option deep within your device’s settings and flip its switch. So let’s do that, shall we?

1. Fire up Assistant on your Pixel – by saying “Hey, Google” or tapping the microphone icon in the search box on your home screen – and then say “Assistant settings”.

2. Tap the line labelled ‘Quick Phrases’ on the screen that comes up. If you don’t see it, tap ‘See all Assistant settings’ and then find it in the broader list that follows.

3. Now, peruse the (admittedly still somewhat limited) list of available commands that your Pixel 7 Assistant can support without any particular launch phrase and think about which ones would be helpful (1.).

As of now, your Pixel’s Assistant can recognize commands for stopping or snoozing an alarm or timer and answering, declining, or silencing an incoming call simply by having a single word spoken.

Decide which of those might be useful for you, and tap away to get them up and running.

2. AN EXCELLENT ASSISTANT ENHANCEMENT

While we’re thinking about ways to make Assistant more useful and less annoying on your Pixel, allow me to direct you to another intriguing option that can save you from saying “Hey, Google” even more.

It’s called Continued Conversation, and it lets you activate Assistant just once – using that familiar launch phrase or any available onscreen shortcut – and then keep

talking to it, with multiple questions or commands and without having to reactivate it each and every time.

To get that system ready:

1. Get your Assistant’s attention and say “Assistant settings”.

2. Look for the ‘Continued Conversation’ toggle on the screen that comes up (and again, if you for any reason don’t see it, tap ‘See all Assistant settings’ and then search through that full list of options until you find it).

3. Flip the toggle next to this into the on position.

And that’s it. The next time you start talking to Assistant, it’ll keep listening for several seconds after it finishes answering your initial inquiry.

3. A SMARTER SOUND SET-UP

Your Pixel 7 has a high-tech system that can identify the acoustics of your environment and then adjust its speaker output accordingly.

The system’s called Adaptive Sound, and it allows your Pixel 7 to sense what sort of room you’re in via its microphone and then optimize its equalizer settings. Translated out of technical terms, that means your music will sound great.

(And if you’re worried about the privacy angle here, Google says all audio is processed locally, never transmitted off your own device, and always deleted shortly after it’s used for these purposes.)

1. Just head into your Pixel’s system settings (by swiping down twice from the top of the screen and then tapping the gear-shaped icon at the bottom of the panel that comes up).

2. Tap ‘Sound & Vibration’, then ‘Adaptive Sound’.

3. Click the switch to turn the feature on.

4. A SOUND SLEEP

If you’re finding yourself groggy and not entirely ready to tackle the day when you wake up, your Pixel 7 can analyse what’s happening in the overnight hours and confirm whether coughing or snoring might be keeping you up.

If you want to embrace your Pixel’s slumber sound sensing system, here’s how to turn it on:

1. Open system settings.

2. Tap ‘Digital Wellbeing & Parental Controls’, then tap ‘Bedtime Mode’.

3. In the ‘Weekly average summary’ box, tap the option to set up a bedtime schedule.

4. Decide what hours you want your phone’s Bedtime Mode to activate. That’ll automatically silence your Pixel,

dim its wallpaper, and put the screen in grayscale to help you prepare for sleep.

Back on that main Bedtime Mode screen, you should see a new prompt within the ‘Weekly average summary’ area to ‘allow bedtime sensor access’ (2.).Tap that, then tap ‘Allow’ on the screen that comes up next.

Now just leave your Pixel powered up and nearby while you snooze – and then, when wake up ready to see what really happened while you were zonked out.

5. AN EXTRA SAFETY LAYER

This next Pixel 7 setting isn’t exactly a fun one to think about, but it could absolutely be important: Since 2019, Google’s Pixel phones have had the ability to detect when you’re in a car crash and then contact 999 on your behalf if you don’t respond right away.

With any luck, you’ll never need it. But 60 seconds of set-up now will make sure it’s ready and available to assist just in case such a situation ever does arise.

Here’s how:

1. Find the Safety app in your Pixel 7’s app drawer (which you can get to by swiping up on the screen from your home screen). Open it.

2. Follow the steps to confirm your Google account and then confirm your emergency contact and medical information – all of which would be available to anyone in the event of an emergency.

3. Once you’re on the Safety app’s main screen, tap the gear-shaped icon in the upper-left corner.

4. Select ‘Car crash detection’.

5. Look for a prompt to update permissions and tap it if you see it.

6. Make sure the toggle next to ‘Car crash detection’ is in the on position.

6, 7 & 8. QUICKER CAMERA CONTROLS

No matter how laser-focused you are on productivity and using your Pixel for

‘Very Important Business’, odds are, you’re going to snap a photo or two with its exceptional camera at least once in a while.

We could spend hours going over all the Pixel camera capabilities, but for our purposes here and now, I want to zoom in and focus on a trio of handy new settings specific to the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro.

First, after a curious absence of a few years, the Pixel 7 brings back the ability to double-tap anywhere on the camera viewfinder screen to quickly zoom into the 2x level. You can then double-tap again to zoom back out to the standard 1x setting. And that’s in addition to being able to swipe your finger along the zoom level bar beneath the viewfinder for even more intricate control.

But the Pixel 7 didn’t just get that double-tap to zoom shortcut back. It also got an option to let you control that gesture and change exactly what it does. So do this:

1. Open up the camera on your Pixel 7 or 7 Pro and head into the settings (by swiping down on the viewfinder area and then tapping the ‘More settings’ button on the panel that pops up).

2. Tap ‘Gestures’, then tap ‘Double-tap action’.

3. And there, you’ll see a series of new options for telling that double-tap command to zoom your camera, to switch between the front and rear view, or to do absolutely nothing (3.).

In that same area of the Pixel Camera app’s settings, tap ‘Volume key action’ – and there, you can access an expanded series of options for what pressing your Pixel’s physical volume keys will do while the camera is active (4.).

Last but not least, back in your main viewfinder area, look for the little circle in the lower-right corner of the screen. That circle shows you a tiny preview of the last picture you took.

With the Pixel 7, though, it has another hidden function: you can press and hold it to pull up a secret menu that’ll let you save your next photo in the Google Photos Locked Folder instead of the standard gallery. That means the image will never get backed up to the cloud and will be accessible only after fingerprint or password authentication (5.).

It’s the perfect way to securely snap an image of something sensitive – like, say, a confidential business document (which is absolutely the only situation you’d ever use a function like this, of course) – and know that it’ll be stored safely away, available only for your eyes, and never synced or stored anywhere other than on your individual device.

That same menu’s present on older Pixels, too, by the way, but it’s in a separate button in the upper-right corner of the Camera app screen.

And speaking of stuff being saved on your Pixel’s storage...

9. YOUR STORAGE STEP-SAVER

Our final Pixel 7 setting is all about your phone’s local storage and making the most of whatever space you’ve got.

Can you guess what tends to eat up the most space on our precious phones and lead to those dreaded low-storage warnings most often? If you said photos and videos, congratulations: You got it right.

Camera-captured media takes up tons of room and is almost always the reason people run out of storage and end up thinking they need more.

Here’s why: as long as you’re using Google Photos to automatically

back and sync all your images you can erase the redundant local copies of those same images and still be able to access them anytime in the Photos app as if they were on the device. There’s no discernible difference in the actual day-to-day experience. (You can also access them just as easily through the Photos app or website on any device where you sign in, for that matter.)

And thanks to your Pixel’s storage management, you can let Google automatically clear out local copies of images once they’re no longer needed. That way, you never have to so much as think about your storage situation. Your phone will just maintain itself, and you’ll always have the space you need.

This one’s a little tricky to find, and no vaguely normal human would ever think to go down this path:

1. Open up the Files app in your Pixel 7 app drawer.

2. Tap the three-line menu icon in the app’s upper-left corner.

3. Select ‘Settings’, then look for the line labelled ‘Smart Storage’.

4. Tap the toggle alongside that line to turn it into the on position.

5. Confirm that you want to activate the feature (6.).

You can now rest easy and clear those storage worries from your overly crowded brain. Your Pixel 7 will automatically delete any images or videos that are backed up to Google Photos once they’ve been on your device for 60 days or if your local storage ever drops below the 25 percent mark. You won’t notice any practical difference, and you won’t have to lift a single finger to make it happen.