Find/Delete Google Assistant’s Data

How to Find and Delete Google Assistant’s Stored Voice Data

by Cameron Summerson 

Every time you use Google Assistant, a recording of the command is uploaded to Google—that’s how it does what it does. A copy of this recording is also stored on your Google account, unless you manually go in and remove it.

So, why is this data stored? Well, it can beuseful to have. For example, if your Google Home stops responding to commands, you can actually hunt these recordings down and listen to them, which can help you pinpoint mic/listening issues. It’s pretty valuable. That said, if you prefer to delete them, it’s not too hard to do.

Find Your Assistant Recordings

To find your own recordings, start by heading over to Google’s My Activity page. You may have to sign in.

The default view on this page shows all of your related activity—data here is broken down into twenty-two different categories, ranging from Ads all the way to YouTube. You can dig through the entire list, or you can narrow down what you’re looking for by clicking the plus sign to the left of the “Filter by date & product” entry.

In the dropdown, choose the “Assistant,” “Home,” and “Voice & Audio” selections. The latter is the real meat and potatoes of what you’re after, but it doesn’t hurt to include all Assistant activities in your results. The “Home” entry didn’t include much data in my results, but yours may vary.

After you’ve selected those options, press the search button to display only those activities.

From there, you can dig through all the results and listen to your recordings as you go by clicking the “Play” button beside any audio files.

Delete Your Assistant Recordings

While you could manually delete each recording as you browse through the list, that would take ages if your data is months or years deep. Instead, there’s a way to delete these recordings in bulk.

Back on the My Activity page, click the “Delete Activity By” link in the left side menu. If the menu isn’t visible, click the three lines in the top left corner to open it.

In this window, choose a date range in the dropdown or choose a custom range using the date boxes just below. On the “All Products” dropdown,  choose the category of items you’d like to delete, and then click the “Delete” button. Follow the same steps for other categories if you like.

There you have it—once you know where to look, it’s easy enough to browse through your recording data and delete whatever you want.