Has Gemini started handing you a different answer to the same question depending on when you ask it? You are not imagining it, and you are not alone. Google pitched the move off Google Assistant as an upgrade. A lot of Pixel owners are reporting the opposite, and their complaints are more specific than general grumbling. Droid Life has rounded up a detailed Reddit thread full of them.
The context is the rollout we reported when Gemini replaced Google Assistant on Android. Assistant is effectively gone from remaining devices, so there is no opting out. That is what makes the reported regressions sting.
What Pixel Owners Report About the Gemini Switch
The complaints Droid Life cites sort fairly neatly into three task groups.
Answers that do not stay put
The thread’s standout example is a user who asked the same question in two separate sessions and got opposite answers. Assistant was dumber but predictable. A chatbot that reasons fresh each time is not, and for factual lookups that is a downgrade.
Smart home routines that stop firing
The thread also carries reports of home-automation routines failing after the switch. This is the category where a replacement assistant has the least room to be creative. A routine either runs or it does not.
Everything you do while driving
Android Auto draws its own cluster of reports: navigation requests not going through, plus trouble with music and texting by voice. Droid Life’s writer adds his own example, saying Android Auto would not navigate to a saved contact on a voice command.
The picture is not uniformly bad, though. Some users say Gemini has worked well enough for them, including one who uses it to turn a kitchen whiteboard into a shopping list. These are self-reported experiences gathered by one outlet from one thread. Treat them as a signal about what is going wrong for people, not as a measured failure rate.
The One Setting Worth Trying
Gemini has a custom-instructions field tucked away in its settings. It lets you tell the assistant how to behave across every conversation. It is aimed at the consistency and agreeableness complaints rather than anything else. Here is where to find it.
- Open the Gemini app on your phone.
- Go to Settings.
- Tap Personal Intelligence.
- Select Instructions for Gemini.
- Type the standing instructions you want Gemini to follow.
The thread’s suggested approach is to push Gemini out of yes-man mode. One user’s instruction tells Gemini to flag it when something the user says conflicts with objective data, and to ask for clarification rather than agree.
If you want more background on this corner of the app, our piece on Gemini’s Daily Brief losing its subscription wall covers another Personal Intelligence feature.
What That Setting Will Not Fix
Be realistic about the scope here. Custom instructions shape how Gemini answers you. They will not repair a smart home routine that fails to trigger. They will not fix Android Auto refusing a navigation request either. Those are execution failures in the parts of the assistant that have to actually do something.
That leaves the harder point. Google removed a tool that worked for deterministic chores and replaced it with one tuned for conversation. Calling that an upgrade is a marketing decision, not a verdict on the switch. Until the reliability gaps close, the honest position is that some users gained and some clearly lost.
Source: Droid Life
