Unofficial Google Now for ICS now has working voice search, available on multiple devices
The unofficial Google Now app for Ice Cream Sandwich has been out for a little while now, but previously it required an additional app in order to get voice search working the way it should. Luckily, developers didn’t stop there – they’ve been diligently working on getting the entire Google Now experience working the way it was intended to work on almost all Ice Cream Sandwich devices, and they’ve finally largely succeeded. (A full list of compatible ARMv7 devices can be found here, but needless to say, almost all new-ish devices are compatible.)
The only requirements to get Google Now, other than running Ice Cream Sandwich on a compatible ARMv7 device, are that you’re rooted and can flash zips in a custom recovery like Team Win or ClockworkMod. In fact, several different zips are available from several different developers, and each have their own little quirks, such as blank screens, stretched text, etc. Depending on your device, your ROM, and your setup, you may have to try several different zips to find the one that works best for you. Still, in all of the different zips, all of the essential functions of Google Now should be functional.
Additionally, each version lets you decide whether or not you want to enable offline dictation – this only adds about 22MB to your installation, so I’d opt for the online-only version only if you’re running low on internal storage.
If you decide to give this latest unofficial version of Google Now a try, be sure to let us know how it works out for you! Oh, and take that, Siri!
[xda-developers] Thanks, Terrell!
