Just deactivate all the assistants altogether. I always delete all the Google stuff from my phones and I don't think I'm missing out on anything. I have a clock app including timers, a calendar app, a notes app and a browser... What would I need an "assistant" for?

The Google assistant was ok, Gemini is pure garbage. I'm sorry for your loss.

Your phone will run GrapheneOS wonderfully

I am sorry, but... may I ask why even have any "AI" or even AI in your phone?

Why outsource your life critical/important or any responsibility on some indeterministic algorithms relying on utter undefined probability, on some vendors, and data founded on stolen now meatgrinded art, effort, actual love... of now defaced/unknown people...?

Why not stay accountable for you own life?

If you need some reminders, I would recommend the following deterministic, stable, human-written and convenient apps:

1. aCalendar+ (...makes your day, week and month since over a decade...)
2. AMdroid (Recurring alarms - daily or weekly repeating alarms, intervals, set expiration, etc...)

The calendar may have regular and synrchonized events from local/remote accounts.
AMdroid, in turn, may add custom actual alarms (more noticeable than basic events) based on these calendar events (e.g., matching a specific text in its description) - you won't miss it.

Not sure about compatibility or relevance to your soecific use-cases, but check out Dicio https://github.com/DicioTeam/dicio-android

I liked when I could say"hey Google, open Libby app" while driving, and it would open my audio book, or "hey Google, play ______ on Spotify" and it would automatically do it. Gemini seems to always want to search the web instead of actually opening the apps, which is annoying, but I refuse to use it so no major loss for me, I guess.

All that to say, I agree.

Gemini is a shit show. I tell it to put something on my shopping list and it tells me it did, but it lied. The voice is annoying and it peonounces the word "ninety" incorrectly half the time. It refuses to start navigating for me. I hate it.

Thanks for the heads up. Unfortunately, it looks like this is coming to all Android devices, with no way to prevent it.

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/news-google-assistant-shutdown-android-gemini/

Inb4 install gOS

Pixel hardware has the capabilities to do local ai stuff. At the baremin I know its capable of auido transcribing on its own hardware.

I would look into if there's a Foss project for pixels that can run a local voice assistant. Because its just pointing at a app in the settings and making it default it shouldn't be hard to find.

The only other option I can think of is setting up a home server with the services you need and using things like davx to sync info to your phone. I know you can run a local voice assistant there no problem, but I never tinkered around enough with home assistant to understand how to get everything the way you want. It sounded like setting up a million little automations on my phone, and then also on home assistant. I have grand disillusionment I'll get around to setting it up by the end of this year but I don't think that's happening.

Seems an odd place for people to be ranking google assistants

Really, I found they completely messed up Google assistant and Gemini is a hundred times better at free form queries. Google Assistant hasn't been good for two years now.