Looking for ways to quell some of the whining that accompanies you on errands? Starting today, Google Assistant’s “Tell Me a Story” feature is available on iOS and Android devices, making it a tiny bit easier for you to keep your kids occupied while they’re sitting in a grocery cart or waiting for a doctor’s appointment to start.
The company added the feature to mobile devices in honor of “National Tell a Story Day” this Saturday. Google rolled out the Google Home version of the feature in 2018. Free stories included with Google Assistant include Let’s Be Firefighters!, featuring the Blaze and Monster Machines characters, and Robot Rampage, starring the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
To get started using the feature, launch Google Assistant on your device and say “Hey Google, tell me a story,” or if it’s time for your littles (or yourself) to wind down for the evening, say “Hey Google, tell me a bedtime story.”
The feature is available in English on mobile devices in the United States, U.K, Canada, Australia, and India. Google Assistant is available on Android devices running Android 5.0 Lollipop and above.
Google Assistant has seen a tremendous amount of growth over the past year. In January of 2019 Google announced that the virtual assistant would be on a billion devices by the end of the month, up from just 500 million devices in May and 400 million in January 2018. At the time, Google said that the “vast majority” of those billion devices were phones.
Now all those phones are ready for storytime.