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On amazon alexa, cards are displayed in the amazon alexa app or on the screen of an echo show ?). If I call my google actions on my smartphone, I am also able to view the cards. But what happens if I use a different non-screen surface, like the google home? Do the cards appear in the google home app anywhere or do they just get lost?

Toni
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  • You may want to try using the multi-surface feature. https://developers.google.com/actions/assistant/surface-capabilities https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92oZvkSZPPU – SysCoder Nov 18 '17 at 16:08

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Cards (and other visual elements you can add) aren't shown if the surface you're currently interacting with doesn't support them. This is intentional since the user may not expect them there and might open the app later and be surprised.

You can always check what surfaces are being supported in your current conversation by using app.getAvailableSurfaces() or the equivalent JSON properties. If you need to show the user something, you can prompt them to change to a surface that supports display by using app.askForNewSurface(). See the documentation about Surface Capabilities for detailed information.

In general, it is a good design to expect the user to only interact with their voice and to require visual information only minimally. Visual information should be used to supplement and enhance the voice as much as possible.

Prisoner
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