Google’s Assistant Snapshot is Going Away

The year was 2018 and your boy was as excited as can be. Why? Because Google had sort of brought back Google Now in a weird, through-the-Assistant sort of way. Without much effort to make you aware of it or to make it easily accessible, Google has decided to kill off the service I’m talking about.

Heard of Google Assistant Snapshot? When Google introduced it, we really thought this might be the second coming of Google Now. It was a feed of your day or week or whatever. It had the weather, a preview of your commute, updates on your sports teams, ticket information, restaurant reservations, travel plans, and even birthday reminders. It was all wrapped up in a slick scrolling UI that received a big update a little over a year and a half ago.

About a month ago, I wondered if something was up with Snapshot, as I couldn’t access it any longer. You used to open it by firing up Google Assistant and then looking for this icon. However, in mid-January, that icon disappeared from my Pixel 6 and never returned. I haven’t been able to access Snapshot in over a month. I asked around, but no one uses Snapshot and so no one noticed it gone either.

Today, folks over at reddit, the few who use it regularly and likely created a home screen shortcut to it (that used to pop-up within Snapshot), noticed a new message that read:

Snapshot is going away soon
You can still ask your Assistant for the updates you find here, like calendar events, birthday reminders, stock prices, and more

Yep, Google is killing the Assistant Snapshot.

Why? Again, I’m not sure they ever made this an easily accessible space within the Assistant ecosystem. You had to open Assistant, look for that tiny icon, an icon with zero description and that they kept shuffling around. Or if you were lucky enough to find the Snapshot Assistant home screen shortcut that popped up within Snapshot at some point, then that gave you access. But that was it. You couldn’t place it where Google Discover sits or setup a Snapshot widget. You just had to know it existed.

RIP to another service that had potential.