Today, Microsoft released its latest monthly update for its Xbox One consoles, called the November 2019 Xbox One Update. While version 1911 contains a variety of features and improvements, the big one is support for Google Assistant.
Of course, Microsoft isn"t building Google Assistant into your console. You still need to have an Assistant device that can be paired with your Xbox One. All you have to do is open your Google Home app, tap Add, choose Set up device -> "Have something already set up?", and then look for your Xbox. You"ll then be able to follow instructions to pair your Assistant device with your console.
With Assistant, you can do all of the things that you can already do with the Amazon Alexa skill. You can tell it to power on or off your Xbox, launch a game, take a screenshot, record a clip, adjust volume, and so on.
Aside from Assistant, you"ll find improved gamertags in the update. Microsoft added support for 13 new alphabets, so anyone making a new gamertag will be able to use them. The company also noted that there will be no change to the way that your own gamertag is displayed if you don"t opt to change it.
Because gamertags can use new characters, there"s a new way to search for people, called People Search. It lets you look for people based on partial and non-exact keywords.
Another key new feature is text filters. You"ll be able to set your messages to Friendly, Medium, Mature, and Unfiltered. If you choose the most restrictive, which is Friendly, you"ll see a message as [Potentially offensive message hidden], and clicking on that message will let you learn more about the settings.
There are also various categories where you can control text filters. For example, you can set different levels for messages from your friends and for messages from people that you don"t know.
As always, there are Mixer improvements. You can move the chat to the left or right side of the screen now, and the Subscribe button will remind you when you"re within a week of having to renew.
Voice-to-text dictation is getting better with support for more languages, with the total languages now including English (U.S. and Canada), English (India), English (UK), Spanish (Mexico), Spanish (Spain), French (Canada), French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Japanese, and Simplified Chinese. Settings has been redesigned as well to make it easier to navigate.
Finally, Microsoft made some OOBE improvements. You"ll be able to set up more of your new console through the Xbox app on iOS and Android.