“OK Google” Dropped As Way To Perform Voice Searches In Chrome On Desktop PCs

You can no longer initiate a voice search without hands on Chrome for Desktop.

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You can no longer say “OK Google” and cause Chrome to perform a voice-based search, at least on desktop. The latest version has dropped this support.

As spotted by VentureBeat, buried in the developer documentation about changes to the latest version released — Chrome 46 — is a note that this has been removed:

Disable ‘Ok Google’ hotwording on desktop Chrome.

This feature has been removed completely from Windows, Mac and Linux
builds of Chrome. ChromeOS is unaffected.

Those who use Chromebooks — which are based on Chrome — still have this feature for their laptops. It also does not impact Chrome for mobile.

VentureBeat says it was removed due to lack of use.

Postscript: Google has updated us confirming they “haven’t seen many users utilize this feature on these platforms,” which is the reason they removed it.


About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a technologist and a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics.

In 2019, Barry was awarded the Outstanding Community Services Award from Search Engine Land, in 2018 he was awarded the US Search Awards the "US Search Personality Of The Year," you can learn more over here and in 2023 he was listed as a top 50 most influential PPCer by Marketing O'Clock.

Barry can be followed on X here and you can learn more about Barry Schwartz over here or on his personal site.

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