TECH: Google Assistant will now stop talking if you just say “stop”.

You can now tell Google Assis­tant to stop speak­ing with one word: “Stop”. That’s it — you don’t even have to say “Hey, Google” before that. Google’s offi­cial Twit­ter account broke the news but calls for a qual­i­ty of life improve­ment for the com­pa­ny’s smart speak­ers and displays.

It some­times takes a while (and sev­er­al repeat­ed attempts) to get the Assis­tan­t’s atten­tion with a “Hey, Google” if it sud­den­ly fires up with­out you want­i­ng it or if you absolute­ly have to cut it off in the mid­dle of the spiel . This new fea­ture solves this problem.

Google has been test­ing the abil­i­ty to issue voice com­mands with­out wake words on Android for at least the last year. The fea­ture, code­named “Gua­camole”, includes the abil­i­ty to can­cel alarms sim­ply by say­ing “Stop”. A year before this exper­i­men­tal fea­ture was dis­cov­ered, anoth­er named “Blue Steel” was leaked to the public.

Blue Steel lets you acti­vate the assis­tant only by prox­im­i­ty, with the voice AI inter­face auto­mat­i­cal­ly appear­ing when you get close to a smart dis­play with­out hav­ing to say any­thing. Google has­n’t said if this new fea­ture is the result of either expe­ri­ence, though we’re sure all that mat­ters if you need to stop the assis­tant from speak­ing is that the fea­ture exists. .