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Google Now on the Galaxy S III

I save this blog for my geekiest posts and haven't been doing much geeky things lately; instead concentrating on more technology for the family issues in my column.

Although I have started doing a bit more geeky things in the column, with How-To support on its blog, like the recent column on consolidating a families photos from their many camera phones, to one place.

However, I just worked out something geeky, and wanted to document it here for others that might search for a solution in the future.

When I first bought my Galaxy S III (I'll call it the Galaxy S3 here too for searching purposes), it did not have Google Now on it.  So I started using Samsung's own S Voice.

When Jelly Bean made it to the S3, Google Voice became available.

However, when I click the button on my Bluetooth earpiece, it was S Voice that came up.

One night I decided to sit down and solve that problem, thinking it would be relatively easy.

I did find some good resources, but some bad ones too, and even with the good sources, had to find a tip in yet another place to make it all work.  So I thought I'd write my own post.

To make Google Now appear when you click the button on your Bluetooth earpiece :

  1. Go to Settings, Application Manager.
  2. Choose the All tab.
  3. Choose the S Voice application.
  4. Touch the Disable button.
  5. Download from the Google Play Store, the free Bluetooth Launch app.
  6. Run that App.
  7. In the Google Search section, choose com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox.VoiceSearchActivity

This part I found on a few websites, but the part I still  had to do was :

  1. Go to Settings, Sound
  2. Check to the box in Touch sounds.

After doing this, when I touch the call button on my Bluetooth earpiece, Google Now appeared on the screen.

Update 03-18-2013 15:15 EST : Then say "Google" to have Google Now accept voice commands.  Thanks Haley Bunselmeyer for drawing that to my attention.

To make Google Now appear when I press the Home button on my phone, I needed to download the free app Home2Shortcut from the Google Play store.

Under Settings in that app, set the Home>Home key to the Google Search app.


Let me know in comments if this does, or does not work for you.

And once you have it working, check out all the voice commands you can give Google Now.
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Comments

  1. UnknownMarch 18, 2013 at 4:11 PM

    Thanks, Mark! Great info! I've been wondering if there was a way to do this!

    ReplyDelete

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