By Emma Roth , a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and ed

The Pixel Buds Pro no longer let you ‘touch and hold’ to hear notifications

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2024-10-04 11:30:11

By Emma Roth , a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and editor at MUO.

Google is taking away a Pixel Buds Pro feature that lets users touch and hold an earbud to hear unread notifications. In an update on Tuesday, Google confirmed that Assistant “will no longer read unread notifications when using the press Assistant feature.”

Additionally, Google says Assistant will stop automatically alerting you to unread notifications on the Pixel Buds, nor will it let you reply. Instead, Google says you can hear notifications by activating Assistant and saying “Read my notifications.”

The “touch and hold” gesture on the Pixel Buds Pro currently lets wearers switch between active noise cancelation and Transparency mode by default. Before this change, users could configure this gesture to have Assistant read notifications aloud.

Last week, Pixel Buds Pro users noticed that they weren’t able to use the “touch and hold” to hear their notifications, but Google didn’t confirm that it’s removing the feature until now.