How do I control a device by voice?
Dictation, assistants and full voice control — three different things, and which one solves which problem.
- Difficulty
- beginner
- Time
- 20 min
- Read
- 2 min
Short answer
Dictation for typing, an assistant for simple commands, and full voice control for operating the device without touching it. They are separate features and full voice control is the one most people do not know exists.
Most people know about assistants and dictation. Full voice control — navigating the entire interface by speaking, with numbered labels on every button — is a genuinely capable accessibility feature that is almost invisible in the settings.
Step by step
- Start with dictation for typing.The microphone on the keyboard. It handles punctuation if you say it — "comma", "full stop", "new line" — and it is far faster than typing for most people.
- Use the assistant for one-off commands.Calls, messages, timers, reminders, playing music. Good for discrete tasks, not for navigating an interface.
- Turn on full voice control for hands-free operation.In accessibility settings. It overlays numbers or names on every control so you can say "tap 7" or "tap send". This is the powerful one.
- Learn the handful of core commands.Scroll down, go back, go home, tap [item], show numbers, show names. Most of what you need is covered by half a dozen.
- Train it with your own vocabulary.Add names and unusual words to the dictionary. Recognition of contacts and place names improves considerably.
- Set up a wake phrase if that helps.Fully hands-free, useful for anyone with limited hand mobility. It also means the microphone is listening, which is a trade-off worth making knowingly.
- Check what works offline.Much on-device dictation now works without a connection, which is faster and keeps the audio on the device.
- Review the privacy settings.Whether recordings are stored or reviewed is usually a separate setting. Worth checking and turning off if you would rather not.
Tips
- Speak at a normal pace and volume. Over-enunciating makes recognition worse, not better.
- Dictation is excellent for long messages even if you have no accessibility need — most people speak several times faster than they type on a phone.
- Full voice control has a learning curve of about ten minutes and is dramatically more capable than an assistant.
Questions people ask
What is the difference between the assistant and voice control?
The assistant handles discrete commands like setting a timer. Voice control operates the entire interface — tapping buttons, scrolling, navigating — without touching the screen.
Does voice dictation work offline?
On most modern phones, yes. It is faster than the online version and keeps the audio on the device.