How to Use Google Assistant’s ‘Tell Me a Story’ Feature on Your Smartphone

Starting today, you can take Google Assistant’s “Tell Me a Story” feature on the road with you.

The feature rolled out for Google Home last year and allows you to say “Hey Google, tell me a story” to trigger your Google Home, Mini, Hub, or Max to tell your child a quick tale. Now, that same feature is available for iOS and Android devices.

To get it, you’ll just want to make sure your device has the latest version of Google Assistant installed.

Once you have the latest version, hearing a story is as easy as just telling your phone, “Hey Google, tell me a story” or “Hey Google, tell me a bedtime story,” if you’re trying to get the kids to go to sleep already.

Google is rolling the feature out this week in anticipation of National Tell a Story Day on April 27.

You can still ask your Google Home to tell you a story, of course. Google Home also has a feature called “read along” that will play sound effects for some books while you read them. It originally launched in October of last year, but hasn’t gotten a ton of attention.

In order for the sound effects feature to work, you need to have one of the supported books, which are all Disney-related Little Golden Books. Sounds are synched up as you read and can skip forward and backward with you, or even take a pause while you chat about what you just read. While simple in concept, I think if this was around when I was a kid it would have blown my mind. Here’s a video of it in action:

Once you have one of the supported books, you activate the feature by saying “Hey Google, let’s read along with Disney.”

The feature only works on Google Home devices, not smartphones, but it works for a slew of Disney titles including classics like Peter Pan, Cinderella, and Alice in Wonderland, as well as new favorites like Frozen, Coco, and Moana.

If nothing else, that “Tell Me a Story” feature on mobile might help you entertain the kiddos for a few extra minutes during your next shopping trip.