Whoa, my Pixel’s Magic Cue finally did something useful

When Google unveiled the Pixel 10 series earlier this year, one of the more hyped features was Magic Cue. Unfortunately, it didn’t really live up to the hype.

Magic Cue, for those unfamiliar, is an AI-powered feature that’s supposed to automatically pull contextually relevant information from your messages and other apps and put it right at your fingertips, saving you time. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really do anything. As I documented in my Pixel 10 review, I had a tough time getting it working in the first place. Once it was running on my device, it rarely showed up. Worse, the few times it did appear, it was seldom helpful.

All in all, it was a pretty big flop in my eyes, especially since it was one of the few notable new features that shipped on the Pixel 10 series.

But now, nearly four months after the launch of the Pixel 10 series, the clouds may be parting on Magic Cue — it works!

Well, it worked. One time. It offered me a single, useful suggestion.

The other night I wanted to listen to some music with my wife, so I pulled up Spotify on my phone to search for a song. My wife had texted me earlier that day saying she wanted to listen to Dani California. When I tapped the search bar in Spotify, I was quite surprised to see Magic Cue appear above my keyboard, suggesting Dani California.

Yup, that’s right. After several months using the Pixel 10 Pro, the first useful Magic Cue suggestion was the name of a song. While admittedly this Magic Cue suggestion was helpful, it’s also massively underwhelming for a feature that was promised to be much more.

The way Google marketed Magic Cue, I expected it’d show up constantly on my phone, reminding me of appointments in my calendar, surfacing relevant information from my conversations, and more. But it’s failed to do any of that well or consistently. All this reinforces what I said about Magic Cue back in September: it’s not a reason to buy a Pixel 10.