Google Gemini app preparing on-device 'Proactive Assistance' feature with app and notification access

An APK teardown of the Google app 17.18 beta reveals Google is developing a "Proactive Assistance" feature for the Gemini app that will provide personalized suggestions by accessing user data from apps, screen content, and notifications.

Feature details

According to strings discovered in the code, Proactive Assistance will allow users to "Choose apps, like Gmail and Calendar, that Proactive Assistance can use for suggestions." The feature can also access "what's on your screen" and "your notifications" to generate contextually relevant suggestions.

Google provided an example at I/O 2025 where Gemini checks a user's Calendar, identifies an upcoming test, and proactively sends a notification linking to a generated practice quiz.

Privacy claims

Google's implementation includes two key privacy statements in the code:

• "The data you allow for Proactive Assistance is processed entirely in a private, encrypted space on your device"
• "Proactive Assistance doesn't use your data for generative AI model training or human review"

These claims indicate on-device processing rather than cloud-based analysis, though Google has not yet publicly confirmed the feature or its privacy architecture.

Additional changes

The teardown also reveals that the existing "Your Day" proactive feed has been renamed to "Daily brief," which appears to be an early implementation of Proactive Assistance functionality.

Separately, Google is discontinuing the original Gemini voice options, referred to in the code as "Legacy voices." The current voice options—Ursa, Nova, Vega, Pegasus, Orion, Eclipse, Capella, Lyra, Dipper, and Orbit—will be replaced with new voices, though details about the replacements were not found in the code.

What this means

Proactive Assistance represents Google's push to make Gemini more context-aware by integrating it with Android's app ecosystem and notification system. The on-device processing claim, if accurate, addresses privacy concerns that have surrounded AI assistants with broad system access. However, as with all APK teardowns, Google may modify or cancel these features before public release. The feature's actual privacy and security implementation will require independent verification once publicly available.