With an update in the App Gallery, Huawei Assistant is renewed with design and function changes. Huawei Assistant is not Celia, the voice assistant of the house, but the screen that appears when you swipe left in the Huawei default launcher. That is, the equivalent of Huawei’s Google Now.
In a new attempt to fill the gap left by Google services, Huawei’s launcher assistant screen seeks your attention as a personalized information and news hub. We tell you everything you can do with Huawei Assistant on a mobile with EMUI after this update.
Information at a glance
The main reason for the existence of Huawei Assistant is to offer you an alternative to what Google Now was a few years ago: a compendium of information and details that could be of interest to you. After the update, the presentation of this information is more attractive, with a customizable design of the different information blocks, called moments.
The Huawei Assistant includes times for “essential” information such as upcoming events, weather, steps, available space and battery information, and package tracking. Much of this data was there before, but now they behave as widgets in a kind of crossover between the Windows 10 Start menu and the iOS 14 widgets: the you can move around and choose between several sizes.
Quick access to apps
On the top of Huawei Assistant there is a customizable shortcut bar. From the settings, you can add applications, web services and some direct actions in applications that are installed on the mobile to this list.
Mobile and web search
Of course, you cannot miss the search bar, which is also twice: perennial at the top and as a widget. Search within Huawei Assistant allows you to search both on mobile and on the web, including tabs to differentiate between web, app and video searches.
For local search, from the Huawei Assistant settings you can choose which elements of the mobile will be included in the search. Items to choose from include settings, applications in AppGallery, files, calendar events, contacts, videos in Huawei Video, optimizer options, and the web.
News, or “discover” mode
Huawei Assistant borrows from Google’s Discover mode to display news from the web. One of the novelties of the last update is that now this feed goes full screen with a swipe up, and being able to update the news with a swipe to the right.
It is not as customizable a system as the Google version, although you can still show what you are not interested in by closing certain news, as well as choose news sources that you want to be used to get the content.
Quick access to the QR code reader
Taking into account that Huawei’s assistant is – in those who have it activated – a slip away, it is a quick way to scan a QR code, as a button is included in the search bar at the top. Pressing this button opens the camera app in QR code scanning mode.
