Complete steps to disable Google Assistant on your phone, Chromebook, or smart speaker

Google Assistant is an integral part of the Android experience, coming in handy for numerous situations. It can schedule and automate tasks with routines, launch apps, make calls, set reminders, control your smart home devices, and much more. It can even answer your questions and hold intelligent conversations.

An ever-improving AI means that it continues to learn new skills and adapt to you and your device usage. But sometimes, you don't want it around. Whether that's because you find it popping up inadvertently or want the most privacy possible, there are ways to disable it.

Here are step-by-step instructions for how to turn off Google Assistant on your Android phone or tablet, Chromebook, or Google Home or Nest smart speaker. If you want to turn off the hot word trigger, we have you covered. Keep reading.

Shutting down Google Assistant on your Android phone is easy if you can play hide and seek. That's because finding the right menu is as challenging as it gets. Here are the step-by-step instructions you'll need to follow to turn off the voice assistant.

If you want to turn the Assistant back on, follow the steps mentioned above. However, when you get to the last option, you'll activate the toggle instead.

You don't have to turn off Google Assistant if you don't need to, though. If you find the "Hey Google" trigger bothersome, turn it off. That way, you can still use the service, but without the hot word. Here's how it's done.

Like Android phones, you can completely turn off Google Assistant in Chrome OS or simply disable the wake word. To do this:

If you want to turn off the wake word instead, click the drop-down menu next to "Hey Google" and select Off.

Google Assistant will no longer answer when you say, "OK Google." However, because Google Assistant is still turned on, you can activate it using other methods.

While you can't turn off Assistant on a Google Home or Nest speaker by tweaking a software setting, you can shut it down with hardware. Press the microphone button on the speaker to turn it off. You'll find it on the rear of Google Home and Google Nest speakers and close to the power cord on Google Home Mini and Google Nest Mini.

Pushing the button mutes the device, preventing Assistant from listening for the wake word and rendering it completely inactive. And if you decide to resume talking to the device, you'll unmute it first.

Interestingly, there's an indirect way to turn off Google Assistant, but it's only temporary. The method boils down to Google's Downtime feature. To use it, open the Google Home app, select the smart speaker, tap Notifications and digital wellbeing, and choose Digital wellbeing.

Then, set up the service and choose the smart speaker from the Devices list. Subsequently, proceed to choose the date and time for Downtime to activate.

There are many reasons why you could want to disable Assistant, such as you don't use it or are big on data privacy. Whatever it is, you can get rid of the digital assistant by following the above steps. Alternatively, you can also turn off the "Hey Google" trigger.

Still on the subject of turning off voice Assistants, if you use a Samsung device in whatever price range and want to disable Bixby, we can help you with that, too.

Haroun became an Android enthusiast in 2014 and has been avidly following the industry since then. He's into many things, but when not scouring the net for the latest tech news, you can find him on his website geeking about cars and car accessories.