I spent a month with the Pixel 10’s most hyped AI feature, and it hasn’t gone well

“The right info, right when you need it.” That’s how Google describes Magic Cue, one of the most prominent new AI features on the Pixel 10 series. Using the power of artificial intelligence, Magic Cue is supposed to automatically suggest helpful info in phone calls, text messages, and other apps without you having to lift a finger.

However, the keyword there is “supposed” to.

I’ve had the Google Pixel 10 Pro for just about a month now, and I’ve been using — or, instead, trying to use — Magic Cue throughout that time. However, even when going out of my way to prompt Magic Cue, it either doesn’t work or does so little that I’m amazed Google made as big a deal about the feature as it did.

After a month with Magic Cue, one thing is clear: it still needs a lot of work.

When I first set up my Pixel 10 Pro, enabling Magic Cue was pretty simple. There’s a dedicated page for it in the Settings app, where you can toggle on/off the types of suggestions Magic Cue can give you and where it can pull data from for those suggestions.

Wanting to experience Magic Cue to the fullest of its abilities, I turned all the suggestions on and gave it access to everything it requested. And request a lot of data Magic Cue did. For the last month, Magic Cue has had access to data from my recent screen activity, “foundational data” from my Google account (such as my email address and phone number), and data from numerous Google apps (Pixel Screenshots, Gmail, Messages, Keep, Contacts, and Calendar).

Given how much I already use Google services, I wasn’t concerned from a privacy perspective about yet another way Google could survey how I use my phone. Still, with how much Google asks for, I expected Magic Cue to blow me away. Unfortunately, it hasn’t come close to doing that once.

One of the main ways Magic Cue is supposed to appear is during phone calls. For example, if you call a restaurant, Magic Cue should be able to find your reservation info in either your inbox or text messages and surface it for you. You can see what this looks like in the picture above, which shows Magic Cue in action during our initial hands-on demo with the Pixel 10 series.

The problem is that this has hardly ever worked for me in the real world. I’ve called Delta’s customer service number on multiple occasions, hoping Magic Cue would surface my upcoming flight info for a trip I have to Italy later this year. Unfortunately, it’s never done this, despite having numerous confirmation emails about it in my Gmail inbox.

I also tried calling Ticketmaster’s customer support number and the phone number for a venue I’m seeing a show at this month. In both instances, Magic Cue failed to display any info about my tickets — even though there’s information about the show in Gmail and Google Calendar.

I’ve had exactly one time over the last month where Magic Cue did activate during a phone call. It was during one of my many calls to Delta, but, unfortunately, Magic Cue showed confirmation details about a flight I had completed a few days ago, rather than the trip I still have coming up.

We’re off to a pretty bad start, so let’s move to another area where Magic Cue is supposed to help: text messages. In addition to phone calls, Magic Cue is also able to recommend certain actions and messages based on your text conversation. For example, if someone texts you and asks, “When is our dinner reservation?” Magic Cue can find that info on your phone and recommend sending it.

I have had more luck getting Magic Cue to appear here in Google Messages, but even when it works, the suggestions it provides are very hit-or-miss.

When I received a text that said, “Where is the Cage the Elephant concert?” Magic Cue instantly suggested sending the name of the venue I’m seeing the show at. Great! For that question, it’s a short, simple answer that gets the job done. Strangely, though, Magic Cue suggested the venue name twice, each with a slightly different format. My guess is that it pulled one suggestion from Gmail and the other from Google Calendar. It’s not the end of the world, but it is a little sloppy.

Other times, Magic Cue’s answers are a lot less helpful. After getting a text that asked, “When is our flight on Friday?” Magic Cue recommended sending the date and time (in military format) of the flight and nothing else — no information about the airport, connecting flights, etc. More importantly, Magic Cue showed the date for the return flight the following Monday, not the Friday flight like I was asked. Good stuff, Google.

And then there are the instances where Magic Cue, once again, fails to do anything. Nothing appeared when I got a text asking, “Hey, what time are we going to the movies on Sunday?” despite having a calendar entry for a movie on Sunday. I also didn’t get a Magic Cue prompt to the text, “What time is the concert on Saturday?” despite — you guessed it — having a calendar entry for a concert on Saturday.

I also tried some text prompts Google recommended in its reviewer guide for the Pixel 10 Pro, such as someone texting to ask for a contact’s phone number and a text asking what movie someone recommended. (I had my friend Will text “Joe PLEASE watch Phantom Thread” to give Magic Cue some data for that second one). In both Google-recommended tests, Magic Cue didn’t do a darn thing.

It’s worth noting that for all of these examples, I had to go out of my way to tee up Magic Cue, texting myself from a second number with texts I thought would trigger the feature. Not once throughout my month with the Pixel 10 Pro has Magic Cue appeared in any of my everyday text conversations — despite me regularly using Google Messages (the only text/chat app Magic Cue works with) to talk to numerous contacts.

Finally, the other main way Magic Cue is supposed to help is when you’re searching for things on your phone. If you look up a restaurant online or add an address to a Keep note, and then open the search bar in Google Maps, Magic Cue is supposed to automatically suggest that business name/address for you.

I tried this by looking at an article about the best bars in Manhattan and then opening Google Maps and tapping the search bar. Sure enough, there was a Magic Cue prompt for the bar I was just reading about. Neat!

However, as you might expect at this point, this aspect of Magic Cue doesn’t work perfectly either. These search suggestions were pulled reliably if I was looking at a dedicated bar/restaurant recommendation website (per Google’s suggestion), but Magic Cue isn’t smart enough to suggest restaurant names if I find them on other apps or websites, such as Reddit (one of my preferred ways to find recommendations like this).

More importantly, I typically look up restaurants from Google Search or Google Maps, both of which already offer direction shortcuts at the tap of a button. Once again, I have to go out of my way to get Magic Cue to work, and even when it does in this instance, it’s not any more helpful than how I would typically use my phone.

On paper, Magic Cue sounds like the perfect AI feature; one you don’t have to consciously think about using, but instead, one that magically appears right when you need it. If that’s how Magic Cue actually worked, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that it could be one of the Pixel 10’s best features.

However, after a month with the Pixel 10 Pro — and by extension Magic Cue — it’s overwhelmingly apparent that’s not how Magic Cue actually works. In my regular, everyday use with the Pixel 10 Pro, Magic Cue has never made itself known. In every situation, I had to create scenarios in which I thought Magic Cue would appear. And as my examples above showcase, the value of Magic Cue’s suggestions ranges from mediocre to unhelpful.

Is there a future where Magic Cue works as advertised? A future where Magic Cue is the reason to buy a Pixel 10? Maybe! There’s certainly potential for an AI feature like this, and I’d love to see Google unlock that potential.

But as it stands today, that’s all Magic Cue is: potential. Nothing about my month with Magic Cue has made me want to keep using it, and I think that’s Google’s most pressing issue. I want Magic Cue to succeed, but first impressions are everything, and the one Magic Cue has left on me isn’t a positive one.