Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Smart Reply has disappeared from the Google Voice app.
- The Google Play Store and App Store confirm the feature has been removed.
- Android still offers reply suggestions.
If you’re a heavy user of the quick reply suggestions on Google Voice, we have some bad news for you. The Smart Reply feature has been removed from Google Voice on both Android and iOS.
If you’re not familiar with Smart reply, it is a feature that provides up to three contextual responses to a message you just received. It normally appears right above the keyboard, allowing you to tap on a response of your choosing and be on your way. This is a feature that was introduced to Google Voices back in February 2022, almost a year ago. Now, the feature has vanished from the app.
It appears that this isn’t a bug or some other issue. On the app’s page in the Play Store and App Store, it states that “Smart reply is no longer supported.” As you can guess, this means that the removal of the feature was intentional.
Although Smart Reply is no longer available in the app, Android owners will still see the feature as part of their notifications. This is because Smart Reply is built into Android. It is possible Google saw this as redundant and believed there was no need for the app to also have Smart Reply.
As a result, this is a development that seemingly hurts iOS users more than Android users. In any case, Smart Reply is still present in a host of other Google apps including Google Messages, Gmail, and Google Docs.
Do you think Google should have kept Smart Reply in the Google Voice app? Let us know in the comments below.
