The old assistant wasn’t bad, especially before they put lens in the search widget instead of being off in its own place where it belongs so that I can uninstall it.
I thought Gemini needed 6 more months of development to be ready for prime time. Apparently I wildly underestimated it. Simple tasks barely work and it offloads anything useful to the old assistant anyway.
I set up a separate assistant button because the assistant on the search bar, even without Gemini, only searches now. I use Firefox so I don’t need it for search. I use it to add things to my to do list and to set timers, the only two things voice assistants are good for in my life.
I don’t understand why they won’t just let me use technology the way I want to use it rather than trying to force me to use it their way. Well, I refuse to understand even though I kind of get it (if I used shit the way I wanted they’d never have the opportunity to show me an advertisement).
Edit: clarity
I removed Gemini and installed assistant. That made it searchable in my app list. Then I just plopped the button on my home screen. When I short press the button it pops up something that asks me to try Gemini, but I just say whatever it is I want and it does it just like it used to in the search bar.