Google Assistant отключат на Android, смарт-часах и наушниках 4 сентября

Google has announced the final shutdown of the Google Assistant voice assistant on Android smartphones and tablets — access to it will be discontinued on September 4, 2026, nearly nine years after the service launched. Gemini will permanently take Assistant's place.

What will happen on September 4

Starting September 4, 2026, Google will discontinue support for Assistant on all Android devices. The restrictions will affect not only smartphones and tablets, but also paired devices: smart watches running Wear OS and wireless headphones that used Assistant for voice control.

Users were notified about this by email. According to 9to5Google, which first published the text of the letter, the message also appeared on Reddit in the r/google community. The notification states:

"We will begin disabling access to

Google Assistant starting September 4." — official Google letter to users.

The letter does not specify an exact date for the complete end of the transition. The Verge has requested confirmation of the notification's authenticity from Google.

Why Google is shutting down Assistant

The decision to shut down Assistant came as no surprise: since 2023, Google has been systematically migrating users to Gemini. In early 2024, the new assistant replaced Assistant as the default on most Android flagship devices.

• Launch of Google Assistant — 2017
• Beginning of replacement with Gemini — 2023–2024
• Mobile shutdown date — September 4, 2026
• Affected devices: smartphones, tablets, Wear OS watches, headphones

Gemini represents a fundamentally different generation of AI assistant: it can analyze images, work with long texts and code, and is tightly integrated with Google Workspace. By mid-2025, updates to Google Assistant had effectively stopped — the company directed all resources toward developing Gemini.

What will change for Android users

After September 4, 2026, Android users will automatically switch to Gemini — Google has not provided a compatibility mode or the ability to revert to the classic Assistant.

For owners of smart watches and headphones, the transition may require a firmware update or manually switching the voice assistant in system settings. The official letter contains no specific migration instructions.

In the Reddit discussion, users point to features that are currently less developed in Gemini: offline speech recognition and deep integration with local Android apps. How significant these limitations will prove in daily use remains to be seen after September 4.

What this means

The closure of Google Assistant marks Google's final transition to Gemini as the company's sole consumer AI platform. For the entire industry, this is a signal: first-generation classic voice assistants are giving way to multimodal language models — a similar transformation is being experienced by Apple Intelligence, Amazon Alexa, and Microsoft's Cortana.

Frequently asked questions

What will replace Google Assistant on Android?

Google is migrating users to Gemini — a multimodal AI assistant based on language models. On most Android smartphones, Gemini became the default assistant as early as 2024.

Will the shutdown affect Google Nest smart speakers?

The official letter only concerns smartphones, tablets, smart watches, and headphones. The fate of Google Assistant support on Google Nest smart speakers is not separately mentioned in the notification.