Things Qbit can look up for you

When the answer depends on today’s world, Qbit goes and checks. Scores, prices, opening hours, breaking news, product details: she looks them up fresh and shows you exactly where she found them.

1. Ask your question in the chat box, the same way you’d ask a person.
2. Qbit decides when a question needs current facts and runs the search herself, so there’s no switch to flip either way.
3. Tap any link in her answer to open the source in a new tab.

• Her sources sit right there in the answer, so you can check anything that matters.
• Any web address she writes out turns into a link you can tap.

Ask about the weather anywhere and you get real, live figures, quoted exactly. She does air quality and pollen counts too, which comes in handy when someone in the house has allergies or there’s smoke around.

1. Ask something like “What’s the weather in Denver this weekend?”
2. For allergies or smoke, try “How’s the pollen this week?” or “Is the air bad here today?”
3. Qbit fetches the live numbers and quotes them exactly as they are.

• Temperatures come in both Fahrenheit and Celsius, so nobody at the table has to convert anything.
• Forecasts reach up to 10 days ahead for weather and 5 days ahead for pollen.
• Grass, tree and weed pollen each get their own reading, so you can tell which one’s making you sneeze.

Real drive times, real distances and real places, complete with the phone number and whether they’re open right now. Plan a trip with a few stops and she draws the whole route on a map.

Screenshots are on their way for this one.

1. Ask “How long is the drive from Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon?” and she gives you the actual time and distance.
2. For a trip with stops, ask “Plan a road trip with stops at X and Y” and she returns a map of the whole route.
3. To find somewhere, ask “Find pizza near me” or “What time does the library in Henderson close?”

• Walking, cycling and transit times work too, for the days nobody wants to drive.
• Each place comes back with its address, phone number, website, rating and whether the doors are open this minute.

Good to know: Good to know: on a child account, place results leave out bars, night clubs, casinos, liquor stores, smoke shops and similar venues. Qbit keeps that filter on any time she can’t confirm an account belongs to an adult.

Connect your Google Calendar once and you can ask her what’s on. She’ll pop new things into your calendar too, which saves a whole lot of tapping.

1. Tap your avatar at the top right, then tap “My Profile”.
2. Open the “Connected Apps” card, the one with the count badge on it.
3. Find “Google Calendar” and tap “Connect”.
4. Back in any conversation, ask “What have I got Thursday?” or “Am I free Saturday afternoon?”
5. To add something, say “Put the dentist in for Tuesday at 3”, with a clear date and time.

• If anything about a new event is unclear, she checks with you first.
• If no calendar’s connected yet, she’ll tell you, so every schedule she shares is your real one.
• Your calendar details only ever go to AI partners whose terms forbid training on them. When that can’t be guaranteed, the tool won’t run at all.

Good to know: Good to know: Qbit reads your calendar and adds new events. For editing or deleting an event, she’ll point you to Google Calendar.

Paste a link and she’ll tell you what the video really is: the title, the channel, how long it runs, when it went up and how many views it has. Handy before you hand the tablet over.

1. Paste a YouTube link into the chat box and ask what it is, or how long it is.
2. Or ask her to find one, like “Find me a YouTube video about sourdough starters”.

• She reads the video’s details, not the video itself, and she’s always upfront that she hasn’t watched it.
• Children’s accounts get SafeSearch on video searches.
• Want her to list your own subscriptions and playlists? Connect your YouTube account first.

Good to know: Good to know: YouTube searching runs on a small daily allowance shared by everyone, so Qbit saves it for when you ask for videos and switches to a regular web search when it runs out.

For sums and clocks, she uses a real calculator and a real clock, so the number you get back is the right one.

1. Ask a calculation, like splitting a bill or converting units.
2. Or ask a date question, or “What time is it in Tokyo right now?”

• Handy for checking a total before you agree to it.
• Any city or timezone works, which makes calling family abroad a lot easier (and a lot less 3 a.m.).

When you say “today”, “tonight” or “this weekend”, she knows exactly which one you mean. Your device’s timezone travels along with every question you send.

1. It’s all automatic. Ask a question with “today” or “tomorrow” in it and Qbit uses your local date.

• It travels with you, so asking on holiday uses the timezone you’re actually standing in.

Good to know: Good to know: your timezone comes straight from your device, so there’s no timezone setting in the app to hunt for.

Tell Qbit your city once and “near me” questions and local weather just work. She goes by what you typed, and your device’s GPS stays out of it entirely.

1. Tap your avatar at the top right, then tap “My Profile”.
2. Open the “Profile” section, the one described as “Your name, where you live, and a bit about you”.
3. Fill in the “I live in” row: City, then State and Country if they apply.
4. Tap “Save Changes” at the bottom of the card.
5. Now ask local questions in any conversation without spelling out where you are.

• Moving house? Update this row and her local answers move right along with you.

Good to know: Good to know: Qbit only knows the city you typed here, so keeping that row filled in and current keeps her local answers spot on.

Anything you keep in My Documents becomes background she can draw on later. Ask what the lease said about pets months from now, with nothing to upload again.

1. Tap the “+” button and choose “Document” to add a file.
2. Choose “Save to My Documents” so it stays in your library. You can also add files straight from the My Documents page.
3. In any later conversation, ask about it in plain words.
4. Qbit finds the relevant passages and answers from those.

• When you attach files to a message, she knows exactly which ones you just added, so “this doc” always means the one you meant.

Good to know: Good to know: a document attached with “Just for this conversation” stays in that one thread and tidies itself away after 14 days without activity.