Mildly Infuriating

I hope everyone who works for google gets turned into tadpoles by a witch

It was annoying having to change that setting so I could shut down the phone and install GrapheneOS.

Another in a long line of messing with user interface things on updates, without any prior warning to the user. And if you even get a changelog at all on the update prompt it's always just vague bullshit like, "Bug fixes and usability improvements," without explaining what those "improvements" are supposed to be.

In unrelated news, the last major update on my Moto G changed the incoming call screen from swipe up to answer, swipe down to reject to swipe left to answer, swipe right to reject. What is this, fucking Tinder now? And don't come at me about the "gesture" setting in the dialer app options, either. Yes, I am aware of it. The only options listed there are now "horizontal swipe" and "single tap to answer." Why any rational individual would want to inflict the hell that is the latter option on themselves is unknown to me.

This kind of horseshit is why boomers and old people are terrified of updates and drive us IT nerds up the wall by perpetually ignoring and dismissing them. Because when you change the user interface choices people are used to behind their backs and without warning, as far as they're concerned you just broke their device.

Cut it out.

Came default on pixel for me. Also can't remove or move the Google search bar.

you can change it

I noticed that and also noticed how they swapped out the assistant for for Gemini AI bullshit that doesn't work right so you can't tell it to turn on a light or generally to do anything and have it actually do it correctly.

Every time my phone gets an update I have to go and switch that shit back. I honestly believe they're trying to get me to buy a Linux phone.

Not just new installations. It also happened on my phone when Android was updated. Thanks OP for also posting where to fix this!

I've changed it to launch Firefox and double press to turn on/off flashlight. I have a Samsung phone

Going full in on the anticompetitive bullshit now? But why? Does Google have a deal with the orange Nazi against EU or what?

Technically it opens your default assistant. Mine is set to Dicio, so it opens that. Also, it wasn't default for me, but just an option I found while exploring settings.

why the Assistant is in German when the phone is set to English

Because Google just has no idea how to deal with multilingual people. Google Assistant's ability to understand and respond to prompts that are in either of my languages is completely unpredictable, even for the language the UI is displaying in. Another issue is that you apparently just cannot in any way control what language call screen will use to talk to a caller. Such a good feature rendered entirely useless for me because of that.

Not just new ones. Last month my mom asked for help because she could no longer turn off her phone. I checked the settings and the power button had been assigned to the assistant.

Same. On my stock Pixel it defaulted to hold the power button for assist. Which I immediately disabled and never looked back.

This was coupled with the power menu being added as a button to the notification shade.

I imagine it was in response to Apple when they switched to having the Siri button.

On the Nothing Phones is it just a press?

Since when is pressing a button a gesture.

Oh, you can change that? I thought this was just how it is now.

Google and languages is its own clusterfuck anyway. To this day, I don't think it properly supports using multiple languages.

First, English YouTube titles were (often badly) auto-translated to German and I found no other option to disable it but to set my entire profile's first language to English. Then it began translating German stuff into English instead.

Is it so hart to implement an option to say "I speak both English and German perfectly well, please stop trying to accommodate some primary language"?

Bonus: Technical terms being translated one way or the other, usually without awareness of the technical, semantic context that would require a specific translation (or none at all).

Anyway, that's tangential.

I turn off my phone every night, so I changed that back as soon as I found out.

They also messed with the navigation bar... Before, instead of having three buttons, you could have it display three lines at the bottom that you used by swiping upward. They did away with that, so now your only options are 1) the three regular buttons that are too easy to accidentally press and take up too much screen real estate, or 2) one line that is harder to use combined with a back functionality enabled by swiping from the left ir right sides of the screen. It's not only slower to use than the three lines, but it also results in accidentally going back when trying to scroll horizontally.

They could have left an option to keep the three lines, but no, they love reminding us we don't really own the devices we pay for >:|

Next step of their Always On (always spying) wet dream.

Just hit it today when setting up my brother's phone. It is so stupid to do it this way.

Yes took me a while to figure this out. Was months ago after an update.

i turned it off and set it to a swipe from the bottom corners of the screen, which makes a lot more sense

To be honest I like this behavior. I haven't enabled the hot word, so this is a really convenient way to launch the assistant. (It doesn't has to be the google assistant btw)