Disable "OK Google" on all screens setting

I don't think you can infer too much from the drop in a few minutes after unplugging - in my experience that's quite variable anyway.

However, from my limited experience of Google Assistant if you set it to be voice activated it's always voice activated. Maybe you can also set it to only do that in car mode, or only when the screen is on, but I don't know of any way to say "only listen when on the home screen and not when in other apps" - after all, the launcher (the app that provides the home screens) is just an app, with no connection to the Google app or Assistant, so there's no particular reason it should work that way. Of course you can turn off the "OK Google" trigger and set it so you have to give a long press on the home button to activate it, but if it's voice activated then it's voice activated.

I should add that my experience with it is limited: I used it for a couple of weeks on my Pixel, decided that I had no need for it and turned it off completely (including going right through my Google settings and turning off a lot of stuff that is automatically enabled when you enable it). Others will know their way around the options better than I do.

Yeah, I meant the long press on home as an alternative to the "ok google" phrase. It does work everywhere rather than just on the home screen, but removes the concern you expressed about battery life and privacy from the always listening. That was why I suggested it.

I don't know how many people ever used the "only when on the screen with the widget" option, but Google want you to use this ideally without even thinking about it, so that restriction wouldn't fit with their vision of integrating Assistant (and hence Google's data collection) with everything you do. So it's not a huge surprise that it's gone. "Everything or nothing" is very much Google's way - I'm currently complaining to them about their phone app nagging me on every call about not having given Google Play Services permissions that have nothing to to with phone calls...

1) the battery. I wouldn't worry. By the way, if you want the batrery to last years longer, it's good advise to not charge it above ~70% and not let it get below 20% or so. Apps like Battery Charge Limit are specifically designed to end charging at your pre-determined cut-off percentage and keep charge it within a very tight range, but the app doesn't work with all devices, so manually monitoring the charge is the only solution to not charging 100%. Many laptops have similar software to limit charge to boost battery longevity too.

2) on my Android 5.0 tablet (without a sim) I uninstalled many (many) Google components (and device manufacturer spyware and chipset manufacturer spyware), including ALL Google Apps, Play Store infrastructure, Google Services Framework, Voice components, telephony components, dialer. Google spyware keyboard was replaced first and then uninstalled, etc. To remove the spyware I settled on an app called Titanium Backup (after trying several root uninstaller apps that were less than reliable: they would not start up after removing some components. Thank goodness for TWRP backups).

I get 95% of my apps from http://www.f-droid.org because they only deal in open-source apps free from crapware that do not rely on Play Services spyware framework being installed. If I need to visit the Spyware Store for some app then I use https://apps.evozi.com/apk-downloader/ to download without signing in to the Spyware Store. If the app or game requires Play Spyware Services it's not worth running.

If you need more precise details of exactly which components I removed, please let me know. I did keep notes of most of it. The notes are at home.

bkenobi69 said:

I'm ok with long press to Google search, but I do want to be able to speak the request. Unfortunately, I would be on the nothing train since that screen doesn't do voice input and just prompts me to turn assistant back on. I bought the phone and pay verizon. I know google already monetized everything including my typed searches, but I don't need it listening to monetize my private conversations while it kills my battery too.

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When I used it I'm pretty sure I could use the home button to activate and then speak the search request without having to turn the "OK Google" voice trigger on.

My understanding is that the identification of the hotphrase "ok google" is on-device and it's only supposed to start transferring to Google's servers when that trigger is detected, i.e. it's not supposed to be sharing everything you say with Google (which would indeed kill your battery very quickly).