Googlerebranded Bard to Geminithis week along with bringing it to Android phones. The company left no stone unturned in the process, renaming a whole bunch of other AI services toGemini, too. The new AI chat tool is also slated to replace Assistant on Android phones in the future, and it’s already possible to make it your default voice assistant on the operating system. When you go that route, you could end up with up to three different shortcuts to Gemini on your home screen, though.
As you can see inthe X post from Dylan Rousselembedded below, there are three different Gemini apps visible on his home screen. While the first one doesn’t support themed icons, the two others show up in Material You’s signature mono-color theme. Even though those two icons look nearly identical, they’re generated from two different apps, as Roussel reveals in a follow-up post.
The first icon is a shortcut to Gemini created via the Google app. The second icon is the Google Assistant app, which turns into Gemini once you enable it and make it your default Android assistant. The third one is the standalone Gemini app you can download from the Play Store (as a fun aside, the brand-new app still features Bard’s name in its app package: com.google.android.apps.bard).
In the end, all three of these icons serve as shortcuts to Gemini when it’s used as your assistant app. No matter which additional apps you download, Gemini itself is part of the Google app. The Gemini app you’re able to download from the Play Store is nothing but an express lane to it for your home screen or app drawer. This is also true for the Google Assistant app, with the old Assistant living inside the Google app, as well.
Since both the Gemini and Google Assistant apps serve as the same shortcut once you’ve enabled Gemini on your phone, it’s likely that either one will be deprecated once (and if) Google makes Gemini the default assistant app on Android. Right now, you can enjoy the fact that you can pick your own preferred path to Gemini on your home screen, and marvel at Google’s wild Gemini journey, showcasing its difficulties with establishing a consistent brand for its AI efforts.
With Gemini, Google’s inability to properly brand products is more apparent than ever
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At the same time, keep in mind that you don’t even need the shortcut on your launcher. Once you’ve activated Gemini, you can reach it via the familiar shortcuts you know from Assistant, like invoking it with the “Hey Google” hotword or by long-pressing your power button. Even with the dedicated Gemini app installed, you will have to choose between Assistant and Gemini. It’s currently not possible to use the Gemini app alongside Assistant, though you can always head to the Gemini web app on your phone alternatively if you’re not ready to make the switch.
There are quite some things to watch out for when you activate Gemini right now, which we went over in ourGemini hands-on.
