While Windows 10 already has Cortana, its voice assistant, many users prefer Google Assistant because of its plethora of features and its powerful ability to adapt to any ecosystem. But the sad part is that Google Assistant cannot be used on desktop computers other than Chromebooks, which is disappointing. Still, don’t be discouraged as we bring you a detailed guide on how to control your computer with Google Assistant. In this article, any Android smartphone, Google Home, Mini, Nest Hub, etc. I talked about some nifty ways to manage your computer with Without further ado, let’s learn how to control your computer with voice commands.
1. Control Your Computer with Google Assistant
Before we begin, let me summarize the main premise of this tutorial. We use an Android smartphone to control the Windows 10 PC. For this, we use the Pushbullet and IFTTT applications on the mobile device and the Push2Run application on the computer. Push2Run was developed by Rob Latour and is completely free to use. The app is designed to automate tasks using voice commands and excels at that. Here is the breakdown of our task flow: Voice command via Google Assistant -> IFTTT -> Pushbullet -> Push2Run on PC -> Final execution of the task on PC. Now that you have the basic idea, let’s get started.
1. First of all, both install Pushbullet (Free) and IFTTT (Free) apps on your Android device. After that, log in with your Google account in both apps and allow the necessary permissions. Make sure you use the same Google account across all apps and platforms.
2. Next, open thrust bullet and IFTTTwebsite on your PC and Sign in with the same Google account.
3. After doing that, download now and Install Push2Run (Free) application on your computer. You have almost established the base, now we will move on to the important steps.
4. Click this connection To open the account page of your Pushbullet. Now scroll down and Search for “Access Tokens”. After that, click on the “Create Access Token” button and it will present you with a set of key values. Copy this token and make sure you don’t share it with anyone.
5. Now open the Push2Run app on your PC and go through the initial setup. In the first dialog, select “Pushbullet” from the left menu and Check the “Enable Pushbullet” box. After that, paste the copied token (from step 4) in the Pushbullet API box. Next, copy the contents of the “Title Filter” box and click the “OK” button.
6. Now, click this connection To create the IFTTT task. Later on, Click the “+” button and then search for “Google Assistant”. Click on it and then select the “Say a sentence with text” option.
7. On the next page, enter the voice commands you will use to connect to your PC. I chose these commands to search on my computer, but you can choose your own command set. But for now, I recommend following my voice commands for everything to run smoothly. Remember, the “$” sign is the task you will ask your computer to execute. Finally, click the “Create Trigger” button.
Note: Turn this on in case it shows some Google Assistant related errors IFTTT Settings page and click the “Edit” button. Now, allow a new Google Assistant use from your account.
8. Now on the next page, click on the “then that” part of the sentence. Search for “Pushbullet” here and open it. After that, click “Send a Note”. Next, Paste the copied text from step 5 (Title Filter) inside the “Title” box. Finally, click the “Create Action” button.
9. You’re almost done. You can try saying “OK Google, tell my computer to turn on the calculator”. The calculator app should open on your PC without any issues. Also, if everything is set up correctly, You should see “Pushbullet connection good” In the bottom bar of the Push2Run app.
2. Create Push2Run Tasks
Now that you have successfully connected Google Assistant to your computer, you can create the tasks you want to perform with voice command. For example, in this section, I will show you how to open Beebom website on PC with Google Assistant. Here we go.
1. Open the Push2Run app and Click on “Actions” from the menu. Click “Add” here.
2. This is the window where you need to define everything. You can give a description of your task, let’s say, Beebom. Next, Under the “Listen” box, enter the voice command you will likely say. For example, I entered open beebom, open beebom.com, open beebom website. You can go any length, right? Then enter the URL directly in the “Open” section. make sure the URLs HTTP or www initiator. After that, press the “OK” button.
3. Now, open toggle in main window and invoke the Google Assistant. Just say “Tell my computer to open beebom” and your computer will instantly open the website in the default browser.
Note: We tried to open multiple websites on Chrome, but neither Push2Run nor Windows 10 worked due to some bugs. So we changed the default web browser to Microsoft Edge and it started working fine. To change the default browser from Windows Settings, open Settings -> Apps -> Default Apps -> Web Browser.
4. If you want to search for anything but not a specific website, you can create another task. Keep the description as you want and change the “listen” command as follows: look for $, search for $ where $ is the query you are looking for. And in the “Open” section paste: http://www.google.com/search?q=$. It makes sure that the search results come from Google. Now call your Assistant: “tell my computer to search for Beebom videos” and there it is.
5. Similarly, here is another example Asking Assistant to play a song on your PC via YouTube. We used DuckDuckGo’s quickplay URL feature. Here is the “Open” field for you to copy: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=!ducky+$+site%3Ayoutube.com
6. This is the last example in this article. Say, you want Turn off your computer with Google Assistant. Even easier. Keep the open field like this: shutdown.exe and as parameters /s /t 10 /c "requested by Google Assistant". Here we use the native shutdown.exe program to shut down the computer and provide a set of parameters to deliver a specific message.
/s means shutdown
/t 10 means shutdown after a 10 second timeout
/c is a syntax for comments that appear before they are closed.
Note: This task requires Administrator permission as it changes the computer’s state. To grant it, click on the “Actions” menu and grant “Push2Run Admin Privilege”.
What More Can We Do?
Well, in the examples above I showed you how to interact with browsers and system apps. But more to learn about other syntax and third party apps. For example, you can adjust the volume with a voice command, play/pause videos in VLC player, update your shopping list in a Notepad, and more. Not to mention the Batch and Powershell integration with Push2Run. It will take PC automation to even higher levels. In the coming days I will bring more detailed tutorials so that we can interact with each Windows component with just one voice command. For now, the developer behind Push2Run has a few ready-made sample cards which you can simply import into the application.
Control Your Windows PC Like a Pro with Google Assistant
This was our deep dive into how we can control Windows computers with Google Assistant. The Push2Run app is simply outstanding and has made the automation process much smoother. So if you like the app, consider donating the developer. here. Anyway, that’s it for us. If you learned something new from the article and would like to see similar tutorials in the future, comment below and let us know. And if you run into any problems, let us know in the comment section.
