Use Voice Control to control your iPad and iPhone

In this video, we’re going to look at how we can control our iPad and iPhone using voice control. Basically, we can open up an app just by telling our iPad or iPhone to open up that app with our voice. This is an accessibility option. Let’s see how this works. Let’s go to my iPad and iPhone.

Let’s first look at this on my iPad. Now, as I mentioned in the introduction, this is an accessibility option. So the first thing that we need to do is we need to go to our settings app, I tap on it. And then we go over to accessibility. Under accessibility, you’re going to see voice control. When I tap on this, we have a number of different options. Now before we go and turn it on, the first thing you may be wondering is what can you see to your iPad?

Well, in order to see what commands you can say, what you do is you go to Customize commands. When I tap on this, I can see all of the different commands, we’re going to go to basic navigation here, what are the different commands I can save for basic navigation, I tap on it. And from here, I can say, open the app switcher, and it will open up the app switcher. If I wanted to go home, I just say go home. Now I do not have to use Hey Siri, this just works just by talking to the iPad once you turn it on. So what you may want to do is set this up as a shortcut. So then it’s always not listening to you. How do we do that? Well, basically, we go back over to our customized commands.

And then we go over to our voice control. And then we go back over to accessibility. When I tap on accessibility down towards the bottom, what we have here is accessibility shortcut. These are shortcuts for accessing different features with accessibility, including voice control. So I tap on this. And if I want to use voice control, all I need to do is just tap on voice control here, when I tap on this, all I need to do to use voice control is just tap on the sleep wake button three times. So when I do that, I’m able to turn on voice control. So let’s go ahead and do that. I’m going to tap on the sleep wake button three times 123. And now we have voice control. So I can go and turn this on. So let’s go ahead and do that. And then I’m going to say go home, we again, we have to first turn it on, and then we can speak to it. So I’m gonna turn it on, go home.

And we can see it went home, I want to open up the settings app, open Settings. And we can see it opened up the settings app. Again, what else can I say to it? Well, all we have to do is go back over to our accessibility. So I’m going to go to my accessibility here. And then we go over to voice control. And we go over to customize commands. Now we’re not really customizing them. But what we can do is view what I can say. So again, if we go to basic navigation, I can see what I can say for basic navigation, I want to open up the app switcher, all I have to do is just say, open app switcher.

I want to open up the control center, Open Control Center. And if you notice, I’m not saying Siri, it’s just listening to me. So it’s constantly listening to me listening for voice commands, we can customize just like it says up here, we can customize what we want to tell. So if you do not see what you want to say, well you can do is go and create a new command, tap on it. And then we type in the phrase what we want to say. And then we set the action it can be with a particular application as well. If you use shortcuts, you can also use Voice Control to open up a shortcut and run a series of commands. So let’s take a look at some of these options here. I can customize the commands, I can set the language. I can also teach the iPad new vocabulary. So I go up to the plus here and I can teach a new vocabulary, basically teaching it new words. I go back I can also have a show a confirmation. I can have a play sound I do not have a play sound this is turned off. And then I can also have a show hints. So what are these? Well, let’s go back over to home. Go home.

And if we look up at the top when I speak, what it’s going to do is give me a confirmation of what I said. If I said the wrong thing. It’ll give me a hint. So I’m going to tell it to open up the settings app. But I’m going to say open Settings app. That’s not what I need to say I just need to say open Settings. So let’s go ahead and tell it to open up this app, you don’t want to say it because otherwise it’ll open it up. But I’m going to say it wrong, I’m going to say open whatever app it is with the word app after it. When I do that, it’s going to give me a hint, right up here. open Settings app. And we can see we have that hint there. I need to say, open Settings, I have to say no but quiet. So then the iPad doesn’t open it up, not the app, I do not have to add the word app.

So those are those hints. So let’s go ahead and open it up, open Settings. And now we can see it opened it back up. If I want to have that overlay continuous, I can do that as well. And then if I want it to be attention aware, I can turn that on, it will only work when I’m looking at the iPad, I would actually recommend this otherwise, what could happen is you could say something, and then if you’re not looking at the iPad, it could listen to you and then open up an app as an example. Remember how I just had to speak quietly. So it wouldn’t open up as I’m looking at the camera as I’m looking at you. It still is listening to me? Well, now I can say go home. And you’re going to notice that it is not going home. But now when I look at the iPad, go home. It went to the Home app because I was looking at it. Now I can say open Settings and it’s not going to open it up because I’m not looking at the iPad.

But now if I go and look at the iPad and say it open Settings, it opened it up because I was looking at the iPad. So I would highly recommend that you turn attention aware on. So that’s basically how it works. I’m going to turn it back off here. Now let’s look at it on the iPhone. As you can imagine it basically works the same way. I go over to the Settings app. And then we go over to accessibility. Under accessibility, we have voice control. From here I go and tap on setup voice control. Now why does it have setup voice control, because I never trained this iPhone to my voice. So I would have to run through a series of steps.

Once I run through those series of steps, I would repeat a couple of things the iPhone would know who my voice is or what my voices and then it could listen to me. And then also I’d be able to turn voice control on. But let’s just take a look at the settings you’re gonna see I have a lot of the same settings, I can view what commands by tapping on custom commands. There’s my basic navigation. I can also look at basic gestures, I can turn some of these on and off. And then I can also set up my own vocabulary. I can also show a confirmation play sound and show hints as well as at the very bottom, set it for attention aware. Again, I would recommend turning this on. So then the only way that that iPhone is going to be listening to is when you are looking at it when you’re paying attention to the iPhone.

This way you can say something when you’re not looking at the iPhone and not have to worry about the iPhone using it as a voice command. So that’s how we use voice control on the iPad and iPhone with voice control, what we’re basically able to do is control our iPad and iPhone with our voice. This is an accessibility option. So you’ll need to go to the Settings app and then go to accessibility. From there, you can turn it on, you may need to train your iPad or your iPhone with your voice. Once you turn it on, I would recommend that you turn on attention aware. This way, what you have to do is pay attention to the particular device in order for it to listen to you. If you want to see what you can say just go to Customize commands. It’s a little misleading. You’re not really customizing anything, although you can. But it’s also where you can see all of the commands you can say. You can add your own vocabulary, and then you can also show a confirmation and show hints. So that’s how we use voice control on the iPad and iPhone.