Earlier this month, Google's Area 120 experimental division announced its latest creation – an Android app called "Reply." Reply essentially brings Allo's Smart Reply feature to all of your communication apps, and it's now available for anyone to download.
Reply is still in beta, and if you want to download it, you'll need to sideload the APK file as it isn't available on the Play Store. Assuming you're comfortable doing this and have a phone running Android 7.0 or later, getting Reply is just a few taps away.
Once you open the app, sign in with your Google account, and enable notification access, you'll get a quick rundown of all the features Reply has to offer. In addition to automated responses based on the context of a conversation you're having, Reply can also generate responses using your location data, send a heap of automatic replies based on your work calendar and certain keywords, and more.
I tested out Reply for a few minutes on my Pixel 2, and whether I was using Android Messages, Hangouts, or Facebook Messenger, it worked just as it's advertised. The suggested replies are certainly what users will interact with the most, but if you take some time to set up all the automation features Reply has to offer, you could turn it into a really powerful tool.
There are still some bugs here and there (I personally wasn't able to set my home or work address), but even so, it's remarkable how well Reply works in such an early form. If you want to give it a try, you can download it here.
