Respond with a Single Touch via Google Reply

There are plenty of instant messaging apps to choose from these days. iMessage, Slack, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Allo and so on, but none of them give you what Google Reply can. Well, the new Google Reply app might be one of the best things that are about to happen to chat apps. The app claims to be able to suggest smart replies to notifications, giving you the chance to respond with a single touch.

Some users claim the app is a little less contextual than Gmail’s version of the feature. When you set up the app, you can add different modes such as “Vacation responder” or “Urgent sound”, so the app can detect tones from incoming messages and know how to respond to them. Even more, according to your phone accelerometer, Reply can also tell if you’re in a vehicle or biking and can auto-respond appropriately. One of the options in Reply is “sleeping,” though it is unclear how the app can tell when you’re in bed or simply hanging out in your house with your phone on the table.

What can you do to get all these? Well, you sign up to request access to the beta, but also note that the very same app has already leaked and is available to download from APK Mirror.

If you want to take the file onto your Android device, I hope that you are familiar with the term “sideloading”. This is the common term for installing it without downloading directly from the Google Play Store. Even if the approval process in the Google Play Store is minimal, the search giant can choose to refuse apps out for violating any of its rules, therefore you have to open Android‘s Settings app, tap Security and check the box next to Unknown Sources.

This allows you to install apps from places other than the Google Play Store. Then, you must simply open the new APK to install. And since this is still in its current beta build, Reply is unable to track commute time via Google Maps, yet I hope that this will soon change as it is a huge thing for me. What about you?