While Windows 10 already has Cortana as its voice assistant, many users prefer Google Assistant for its great number of features and powerful capability to adapt to any ecosystem. However, the sad part is that Google Assistant is not available on desktop computers except Chromebooks and that is disappointing. Nevertheless, you should not be disheartened as we bring you an in-depth guide on how to control your PC with Google Assistant. In this article, I have mentioned some nifty ways to manage your computer with any Android smartphone, Google Home, Mini, Nest Hub, etc. So without further ado, let’s go ahead and learn how to control your PC with voice commands.
Before we begin, let me outline the basic premise of this tutorial. We are using an Android smartphone to control a Windows 10 PC. And for that, we are using Pushbullet and IFTTT apps on the mobile device and Push2Run application on the computer. Push2Run has been developed by Rob Latour and it’s completely free to use. The app is designed for automating tasks using voice commands and it’s excellent at that. So here is the break down of our task flow: Voice command through Google Assistant -> IFTTT -> Pushbullet -> Push2Run on PC -> Final execution of the task on PC. Now that you have got the basic idea, let’s begin.
- Click on this link to open your Pushbullet’s account page. Now, scroll down and look for “Access Tokens”. After that, click on the “Create Access Token” button and it will offer you a string of key values. Copy that token and make sure you don’t share it with anyone.
Now that you have successfully connected Google Assistant with your PC, you can create tasks that you would like to perform with a voice command. For example, in this section, I will show you how to open the Beebom website on PC with Google Assistant. Here we go.
- This is the last example in this article. Say, you want to shut down your computer with Google Assistant. It’s even easier. Keep the Open field as shutdown.exe and parameters as /s /t 10 /c “requested by Google Assistant”. Here, we are using the native shutdown.exe program to turn off the computer and providing a bunch of parameters to convey a certain message.
What More Can We Do?
Well, in the above examples, I have shown you how to interact with browsers and system applications. But there is a lot more to learn about other syntax and third-party applications. For example, you can set the volume with a voice command, play/pause videos in the VLC player, update your shopping list in a Notepad and more. I have not even mentioned Batch and Powershell integration with Push2Run. It would take PC automation to even greater heights. In the coming days, I will be bringing more in-depth tutorials so that we can interact with every Windows component with just a voice command. As for now, the developer behind Push2Run has a couple of ready-made example cards which you can simply import to the app.
