Google launches a new directory to help you discover Assistant actions

Google says you can now perform more than a million actions with the Google Assistant. Those range from looking up photos with Google Photos to starting a meditation session from Headspace. But one problem with voice assistants is that it’s very hard to discover which actions you actually can perform. For many users, that means they use their Google Home or Alexa to set a few timers and maybe play music, without ever realizing what else they can do.

To help its users a bit, Google is launching a new directory page for the Google Assistant today. This is part of a slew of Assistant-related announcements at CES today; while it’s probably not the most important (those smart displays sure look nice, after all), it’s nevertheless a useful new tool, especially for new users.

It’s been almost exactly a year since Google enabled third-party actions, and while Google can’t boast the same numbers of third-party support as Amazon, there’s clearly a lot of developer interest in building these actions. And to make talking about them a bit easier, Google is also now calling its first-party actions… wait for it… “actions.”