Gboard for Google Pixel 8 Pro gets 'Smart Reply' feature; here's how to enable it

Have you already installed the latest Pixel December Feature Drop on your Pixel 8 Pro but you still don’t have the Gboard ‘Smart Reply’ feature available? Then this story is for you, as we explain how to enable this interesting option that promises to speed up or liven up your chats.

‘Smart Reply’ is an AI-powered feature integrated into the Gboard app (Google keyboard), but for now exclusive to the Pixel 8 Pro. It is capable of analyzing the context of a conversation in messaging apps to suggest potentially useful replies.

It is exclusive to the Pixel 8 Pro because it relies on the new on-device Gemini Nano AI model that arrived on the device with the latest Feature Drop. This also implies that all its AI-processing is local, without involvement of Google cloud services.

As of today, it is not known if the new AI model and its derived features will also reach the vanilla Pixel 8, whose chipset is theoretically the same as the Pro model. It is also in doubt whether it will reach older Pixel devices.

It’s notewhorty that some related references had previously appeared in a teardown made to the latest AICore APK version (exclusive to the Pixel 8 Pro). Currently, the feature is not fully implemented but is available in ‘developer preview’ status, so the option to enable it is not accessible at first glance from the Gboard settings.

That said, below you will learn how to activate Smart Reply to test its virtues.

First you should know that, in its current status, Gboard ‘Smart Reply’ feature is only compatible with WhatsApp, the most popular messaging app in the world. It’s intriguing that Google didn’t choose its own Messages app for testing, but perhaps they wanted to reach the widest possible audience from the start to get more useful feedback. However, it will be available in more apps starting next year.

Also, Smart Reply currently only supports English language. To enable it, you must first enable ‘Developer Options’ on your device (you can ignore this step if you have already done so):

1. Go to your phone Settings
2. Tap on ‘About Phone’
3. Tap on ‘Build number’ 7 times and you will receive a ‘You are a developer’ message
4. Go back and ‘Developer Options’ will be in the list of options

Then, to activate Smart Reply, you just have to tap on the new ‘Developer Options’ menu, search for ‘AiCore Settings’ and enable the ‘Enable Aicore Persistent’ option. Now you can open a conversation on WhatsApp and you will see how Gboard suggests context-based replies.

This feature seems quite useful not only to save typing time when responding to ‘normal’ messages, but it could even help you ‘unstuck’ those conversations where you don’t know how to continue. This is just the beginning and it will be interesting to see where it can go in more advanced stages of development.