Perplexity has turned its artificial intelligence into a mobile assistant for Android. The new assistant can answer general questions and perform tasks on your behalf, such as writing emails, setting reminders, making dinner reservations, and more.
It is also multimodal, meaning that you can ask it questions about what is happening on the screen, as well as open the camera and “see” what is in front of you. In the example provided by Perplexity, the user asks the assistant to “give me a ride.” Upon learning where the user wants to go, the assistant automatically opens an Uber with available rides to that destination.
I tried it out for myself, and it’s really cool. When I asked him to “discover a good podcast,” my phone started playing the latest episode of The Joe Rogan Experience on YouTube. It worked pretty quickly, although its taste might be questionable.
Using my phone’s camera, Perplexity’s assistant successfully identified a promotional Pokémon pack I received at McDonald’s Happy Meal (don’t judge), which was impressive to me since the promotion had only started a few days ago. It also helped me write and send a message to a family member using information from my contacts.
Simultaneously with the announcement of the Samsung Galaxy S25 equipped with Gemini, Google showed that its AI assistant can now perform tasks in multiple applications, as well as perform multimodal queries.
But the Perplexity assistant does not work in all applications and with all functions. For example, it can’t access Slack or Reddit, and I couldn’t use it to leave a comment on a YouTube video either. According to Perplexity spokesperson Sara Platick, the assistant currently supports Spotify, YouTube, and Uber, as well as email, messaging, and clocks. “We’re continuing to add support for more apps and functionality, so this is just a starting point,” adds Sara Platick.
You can enable the assistant through the Perplexity app, which will prompt you to replace the default assistant with Perplexity. From there, you can swipe up in the left corner of the screen or hold down the Home button to access the assistant.
However, this feature is not currently available on the iPhone. “If Apple gives us the appropriate permissions, we will do it,” says Platnik.
