You can activate your Assistant in a few ways, depending on your device. For example, you might say “Hey Google” or activate it manually by holding your phone’s power button or home button.

Google Assistant might activate when you didn’t intend it to because it incorrectly detected that you wanted its help - for instance when there is a noise that sounds like “Hey Google” or you manually activate it accidentally.

If that happens, and your Web & App Activity is turned on, you can say, “Hey Google, that wasn’t for you,” and your Assistant will delete what you said from My Activity. You can also review and delete your Assistant interactions in My Activity at any time. If Google Assistant activates when you didn’t intend it to, and your Web & App Activity setting is disabled, your Assistant interaction will not be stored in My Activity. If, however, your Web & App Activity setting is on, your Assistant interactions, including any unintended activations, will be stored in My Activity and treated like normal activations. Your data in My Activity is used to develop and improve Google services (including technologies that help reduce unintended activations), as explained in Google’s Privacy Policy. You can always stop saving activity by turning off your Web & App Activity setting.



To better tailor Google Assistant to your environment, you can adjust how sensitive your Assistant is to activation phrases (like “Hey Google”) through the Google Home app for smart speakers and smart displays.



We are constantly working to make our systems better for everyone, including building technologies to help reduce unintended activations.

Google Assistant is designed to wait in standby mode until it detects an activation. In standby mode, the device processes short snippets of audio (a few seconds) to detect an activation – like when you say “Hey Google.” If no activation is detected, then those audio snippets won’t be sent or saved to Google.

Once it detects an activation, your Assistant exits standby mode - this includes if there is an unintended manual activation or a noise that sounds like “Hey Google.” Your device then records what it hears and sends the audio recording to Google servers to fulfill your request. The recording may include a few seconds before the activation to catch your entire request.


By default, your audio recordings are not saved on Google servers - you can change this setting anytime by viewing the “Include voice and audio activity” checkbox under the Web & App Activity setting.

Assistant uses your queries and info from your linked devices and services, to understand and respond to you, including to personalize your experience. Examples of info from your linked devices and services include location, contacts, device names, tasks, events, alarms, installed apps, and playlists. 


Your data is also used to develop and improve Google products and services and machine learning technologies (including technologies that help reduce unintended activations), as explained in Google’s Privacy Policy. To help assess quality and improve Assistant, human reviewers (which include third parties) read, annotate, and process the text of your Assistant queries and related info. We take steps to protect your privacy as part of this process. This includes disassociating your queries from your Google Account before reviewers see or annotate them.

Learn more about how Google Assistant works with your data. Visit Google’s Privacy Policy to learn more about how Google protects and uses your data.

By default, your audio recordings are not saved on Google servers - you can change this setting anytime by viewing the “Include voice and audio activity” checkbox under the Web & App Activity setting.



With Personalized speech recognition, Google Assistant will get better at recognizing your words and phrases to offer more tailored help. Starting with Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro, this feature works by saving your Assistant interactions, including audio, securely on your device. You can turn this feature off at any time in “Your Speech Recognition” in Assistant settings.

If you’d like to help improve our audio recognition technology for everyone, including technologies to help reduce unintended activations for everyone, you can choose to have your audio recordings securely retained and made available to our speech improvement systems. This helps products like Google Assistant improve their ability to understand language even better in the future. Learn more about this process.

If you decide to save your audio recordings, portions of them may be reviewed to help us improve our audio recognition technologies, including technologies to help reduce unintended activations for everyone.



For example, audio recordings can be used for Google’s audio review process. During this process, a sample of machine-selected audio snippets are disassociated from their Google accounts. Then trained reviewers (which include third parties) can analyze the audio to annotate the recording and verify if the words said were accurately understood by Google’s audio recognition technologies. This helps a product like Google Assistant improve its ability to understand language even better in the future.

Government agencies can issue legal processes to Google requesting user data. We carefully review each request in accordance with applicable laws. If a request is overly broad, we may narrow it, or object to producing the requested data. In our Transparency Report, we share the number and types of requests that we receive. Learn more.