Still using Allo? Yeah, we’re not either, but there are still some people on that train and for them Allo is getting some new tricks today with Google announcing one-tap Assistant access, GIF integration and animated emoji.
The Google Assistant is getting faster access in Allo by having a shortcut included on the bar above the keyboard alongside the microphone, making it easier to include the Assistant in your conversations. Having faster access to Assistant can get you faster answers when planning an outing to a movie, restaurant, or even settling an argument without jumping into Google search and back to Allo.
It will be easier to access GIFs in Allo as well, the GIF search bar is now accessible by tapping the stickers button next to the new Assistant button. Simply tap the button, slide past all those awesome (/s) stickers and you’ll see a ‘Pull for GIFs’ option, slide that out and you can type in a search term and find a corresponding GIF.
Finally, those fat emoji we’ve come to know and love in Android, and Allo are getting animated. Google has animated the top 10 emoji in Allo so once you select one of the emoji they’ve animated you tap and hold the send button and then move the slider up and down to see the animation. You can apparently try it out with these emoji to start with:?,?,?,? or ?, but we don’t seem to have them working in our version of Allo as yet so we can’t say which other ones are working – we sure as heck hope the ? emoji isn’t one of them.
The update to Allo to include the one-tap access to Assistant or the new GIF search hasn’t yet rolled out, at least to us yet, but it will probably be along in due course.
Fixing all the important faults with allo then I see.