Google debuted the Live View feature when they launched their Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL units, helping users see a real-time layout of the streets they are walking so that they get better directions.

Of course, this is one of those features that leveraged the AR capabilities of smartphones to work, but it was made exclusive to the Pixels at that time – which we can say is a great marketing decision.

Starting today, though, you don’t have to own a Pixel phone to have the Live View feature work on your device.

Google has now made it such that all iPhones with the ARKit and Android devices sporting ARCore can now enjoy the same feature. When in the Maps app, all you have to do is choose a waypoint and then click on the Live View option at the base of the page. That will let you look at the streets with your camera while navigating to your preferred destination with real-time sights of where your next step should be.

Honestly, we believe this to be one of such updates that will greatly improve the way we interact with the apps.

The Google Assistant just got a new update that would make it even more useful for many.

After applying the update, the Assistant will now be able to read your messages to you from some third-party apps. Of course, you would have to grant it the permission to do this before it works – in a bid to ensure your privacy is upheld.

The best thing about the new update is that you also get to reply to the messages (via voice, of course) with the Assistant.

For those who use their Google Assistant well enough, they would know that you can do this on the normal text messaging app already. However, the update doesn’t come with support for either Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp. If you were on Android Auto, though, that is another ball game entirely.

Since this is a fairly recent addition, we don’t expect everything to work well out of the box. Being Google, though, it is worth a shot.