Google Assistant is built to keep your information private, safe, and secure

No. Google Assistant is designed to wait in standby mode until it detects an activation, like when it hears “Hey Google.” When in standby mode, your Assistant won’t send what you are saying to Google or anyone else. Once Google Assistant detects an activation, it exits standby mode and sends your request to Google servers. This can also happen if there is a noise that sounds like “Hey Google” or an unintended manual activation.

You can activate your Assistant in a few ways, depending on your device. For example, you might say “Hey Google” or activate it manually by holding your phone’s power button or home button.

The status indicator on your device, such as an on-screen indicator or flashing LEDs on top of your device, lets you know when Google Assistant is activated.

Google Assistant might activate when you didn’t intend it to because it incorrectly detected that you wanted its help - for instance when there is a noise that sounds like “Hey Google” or you manually activate it accidentally.

If that happens, and your Web & App Activity is turned on, you can say, “Hey Google, that wasn’t for you,” and your Assistant will delete what you said from My Activity. You can also review and delete your Assistant interactions in My Activity at any time. If Google Assistant activates when you didn’t intend it to, and your Web & App Activity setting is disabled, your Assistant interaction will not be stored in My Activity. If, however, your Web & App Activity setting is on, your Assistant interactions, including any unintended activations, will be stored in My Activity and treated like normal activations. Your data in My Activity is used to develop and improve Google services (including technologies that help reduce unintended activations), as explained in Google’s Privacy Policy. You can always stop saving activity by turning off your Web & App Activity setting.



To better tailor Google Assistant to your environment, you can adjust how sensitive your Assistant is to activation phrases (like “Hey Google”) through the Google Home app for smart speakers and smart displays.



We are constantly working to make our systems better for everyone, including building technologies to help reduce unintended activations.

Google Assistant is designed to wait in standby mode until it detects an activation. In standby mode, the device processes short snippets of audio (a few seconds) to detect an activation – like when you say “Hey Google.” If no activation is detected, then those audio snippets won’t be sent or saved to Google.

Once it detects an activation, your Assistant exits standby mode - this includes if there is an unintended manual activation or a noise that sounds like “Hey Google.” Your device then records what it hears and sends the audio recording to Google servers to fulfill your request. The recording may include a few seconds before the activation to catch your entire request.


By default, your audio recordings are not saved on Google servers - you can change this setting anytime by viewing the “Include voice and audio activity” checkbox under the Web & App Activity setting.

Assistant uses your queries and info from your linked devices and services, to understand and respond to you, including to personalize your experience. Examples of info from your linked devices and services include location, contacts, device names, tasks, events, alarms, installed apps, and playlists. 


Your data is also used to develop and improve Google products and services and machine learning technologies (including technologies that help reduce unintended activations), as explained in Google’s Privacy Policy. To help assess quality and improve Assistant, human reviewers (which include third parties) read, annotate, and process the text of your Assistant queries and related info. We take steps to protect your privacy as part of this process. This includes disassociating your queries from your Google Account before reviewers see or annotate them.

Learn more about how Google Assistant works with your data. Visit Google’s Privacy Policy to learn more about how Google protects and uses your data.

By default, your audio recordings are not saved on Google servers - you can change this setting anytime by viewing the “Include voice and audio activity” checkbox under the Web & App Activity setting.



With Personalized speech recognition, Google Assistant will get better at recognizing your words and phrases to offer more tailored help. Starting with Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro, this feature works by saving your Assistant interactions, including audio, securely on your device. You can turn this feature off at any time in “Your Speech Recognition” in Assistant settings.

If you’d like to help improve our audio recognition technology for everyone, including technologies to help reduce unintended activations for everyone, you can choose to have your audio recordings securely retained and made available to our speech improvement systems. This helps products like Google Assistant improve their ability to understand language even better in the future. Learn more about this process.

If you decide to save your audio recordings, portions of them may be reviewed to help us improve our audio recognition technologies, including technologies to help reduce unintended activations for everyone.



For example, audio recordings can be used for Google’s audio review process. During this process, a sample of machine-selected audio snippets are disassociated from their Google accounts. Then trained reviewers (which include third parties) can analyze the audio to annotate the recording and verify if the words said were accurately understood by Google’s audio recognition technologies. This helps a product like Google Assistant improve its ability to understand language even better in the future.

Government agencies can issue legal processes to Google requesting user data. We carefully review each request in accordance with applicable laws. If a request is overly broad, we may narrow it, or object to producing the requested data. In our Transparency Report, we share the number and types of requests that we receive. Learn more.

Google never sells your audio recordings or other personal information.

Just ask Google Assistant questions like “Where can I change my privacy settings?” to get answers to the most common privacy and security questions. Or you can always visit “Your data in the Assistant” directly to access your privacy controls.

You can review and delete your Assistant interactions from My Activity, or by saying “Hey Google, delete what I said this week.” Visit your Assistant settings to access additional controls.

Yes, you can have your activity data auto-delete from My Activity. Choose a time limit for how long you want your activity data to be saved there– 3, 18, or 36 months – and any data older than that will be automatically deleted from My Activity on an ongoing basis.

Data from your Google Account can personalize your Google Assistant experience and make your Assistant more useful to you.

There are certain questions that require your data for Google Assistant to help. For example, if you ask “When is my mom’s birthday?” your Assistant needs to reference your contacts to know who “mom” is and look up her birthday. Or if you ask “Do I need an umbrella tomorrow?” your Assistant uses your current location to give you the most relevant answer.

Google Assistant also uses data to provide you with proactive suggestions. For example, your Assistant can notify you when there is traffic on your regular routes by using your location.


Google Assistant can improve your results using activity in your Google Account. For example, if you ask “What should I make for dinner tonight?” your Assistant may use previous Search history to provide personalized recipe recommendations.

You can always visit “Your data in Google Assistant” to view or delete your data, check your current settings, and learn more about the controls available.

Visit Google’s Privacy Policy to learn more about how Google protects and uses your data.

Learn more about how Google Assistant works with your data.

Yes. Google Assistant makes it easy for multiple users to each have a personalized experience on a shared device. To receive personal results – like directions to work or personalized recipe recommendations – only when your Assistant recognizes your voice, set up Voice Match by following these steps. Family Link users can also get personal results from Google Assistant by following these steps.

On mobile and shared devices like speakers, you can control access to personal results by changing your settings. And on mobile, you can control how personal results appear on your lock screen.

To turn on Guest Mode, just say, “Hey Google, turn on Guest Mode” to your speaker or Smart Display. To return to your personalized Assistant experience, just say, “Hey Google, turn off Guest Mode.” Your device will remain in Guest Mode until you or someone else requests to exit the mode.

When you're in Guest Mode, your device will play a special chime. On displays, you'll also see a guest icon on the screen. And if you’re not sure, you can always ask. Just say, “Hey Google, is Guest Mode on?"

Yes, anyone interacting with your device can turn Guest Mode on and off.

Children that have an account linked to Google Assistant will not be able to turn on Guest Mode.

No, putting a device in Guest Mode does not turn it on for multiple devices.

In Guest Mode, you can still enjoy the convenience of your Assistant, like asking questions, controlling smart home devices, setting timers, and playing music. However, personalized results will not be available until you leave Guest Mode. These include your calendar, shopping lists, saved contacts and more. At any time, you can say, “Hey Google, turn off Guest Mode” to return to your personalized experience.

Your Assistant interactions, including all of your voice queries, won’t be saved to your Google Account. If you ask your Assistant to interact with another app or service, like your music provider or another Google product, that app or service may still retain your activity history within that app.

While in Guest Mode, your Google Assistant activity history won’t be saved to your Google Account and won’t be used to personalize your Assistant experience. For example, if you look up recipes while in Guest Mode, those searches will not be used by Google to tailor recipe recommendations for you in the future. However, because other products may still save your activity if you interact with them while in Guest Mode, your YouTube and Maps activity while in Guest Mode may still be used to recommend future videos and places to go.

Google Assistant provides a variety of activities, from stories, to games, to learning tools for children and families, including some content provided by third-party developers. These developers must qualify to publish content for families on Assistant by having a Teacher Approved app, or entering into a partnership agreement with Google for their family-friendly Action. Any Actions intended for children provided by third-party developers must meet specific requirements of our Actions for Families program, in addition to our standard Action policies. We review these Actions for compliance with our policies and requirements before they are generally available in Google Assistant.

You can set content controls for shared devices in your home, like smart displays, using the Digital Wellbeing controls in the Google Home app. With these settings, you can manage downtime schedules, content filtering settings, and limit certain activities, such as phone calls. You can also decide if these settings apply to guests and supervised accounts managed with Family Link, or all users of that device.



You can set limits for individual children using the parental controls offered in Family Link. On shared devices, you can link your child’s account to the device using Voice Match, so Assistant can recognize them. Once your child is enrolled, they can only access non-Google Actions with the “For families” badge and are prevented from taking certain actions, such as making purchases through Assistant. These limits apply on any Google Assistant devices where they are enrolled. For more information about how a Family Link account works with Google Home and Assistant, see the Google for Families Help.

Google does not share personal information, such as your child's name, email address, voice recordings, or specific location, to Actions for Families providers. These providers also agree to not solicit personal information from users in their Google Assistant conversations. We take action if we find any Actions violating these policies.

We do not save audio recordings from interactions with children’s features like Actions for Families activities or YouTube Kids videos, unless we have consent to do so for a Google Account Managed with Family Link that has opted in to include audio recordings. For more details, see our Privacy Notice.

Yes. You can access, export, and delete your child’s saved activity by signing into their account managed by Family Link. You can also manage your child’s activity settings through the Family Link app, or by visiting families.google.com and clicking on the child’s profile. For more details, go to g.co/childaccounthelp.