How to Control Everything on Your Phone With Your Voice (iOS and Android)

With the arrival of digital assistant apps like Gemini and Siri, most of us have grown used to talking to our phones. But conversing with your Android or iOS device can go way beyond interacting with AI. You can also use your voice to launch apps, fill out text fields, and do just about everything that was previously only possible with your fingers and thumbs.

Of course, the traditional touchscreen input will often be the way to go. But there might well be scenarios—when you’re cooking, repairing something, looking after children, or doing anything else that keeps your hands busy—where it’s easier and more convenient to use voice input instead. The usefulness of voice control is of course well known to those who have impairments that keep them from controling a touchscreen phone with the usual taps and swipes.

Here’s how you can set up the feature on your phone, whether you’re running Android or iOS.

Voice Control on Android

To configure voice control on an Android device, you need to install the free Voice Access app from the Google Play Store. You also need to have the Google app installed, but this should’ve come preinstalled on whatever Android handset you’ve got.

Once you’ve installed Voice Access, you can enable this feature from Settings. On a Pixel phone, head to Accessibility > Voice Access. The exact location of the feature may vary on other handsets, but it’ll be somewhere in the Accessibility menus. For Samsung devices, for example, it’s under Accessibility > Interaction and dexterity > Voice Access.

Enabling Voice Access on Android.

Photograph: David Nield

During the setup of the feature, you’ll be able to tweak a few of the options, including whether to display a persistent button onscreen for launching Voice Access, and whether the feature is always listening for commands whenever the screen is on (which is recommended for convenience).

The same Voice Access screen where you enable the feature also gives you access to a few more key settings. These include options for how long your phone should wait before it stops listening for commands, how precise your phrasing has to be for instructions, and how the Voice Access shortcuts are displayed on screen.

Voice Access can be launched by saying, “Hey Google, start Voice Access,” or via any of the shortcuts you’ve configured in the Voice Access settings (including an on-screen button and a gesture shortcut). When the feature is active, you’ll see an icon showing four dots up in the top left corner, and you can then start speaking to control your phone.