Google has made big strides in getting Android phones to be as hands-free as possible, and Android 11 really takes this to another level with the Voice Access feature.
Voice Access itself isn’t new, but it does get a pretty sizeable usability boost with Android 11. It’s essentially super charged and works a whole lot better than it used to. So if you have trouble touching the screen then this will be something you want to look out for.
To make this all work, you need to have the Voice Access app from Google installed on your device. You also need to have the latest version of the Google app. If you don’t, it isn’t a big issue because Google will prompt you to update it the first time you set up Voice Access anyway.
Voice Access in Android 11 can read the context of your screen
Voice Access has always been a useful tool but it in Android 10 all it would do is number things on your screen. For example, a little number would be placed next to each app or action that was on the display. You’d then have to read off those numbers for Android to know what it was you were trying to do.
That isn’t the case any more. Voice Access can actually now read the context of your screen. You don’t even have to be looking at it so you know what number you need. You can just say the name of the app and it’ll launch it. It’ll even recognize the name of a specific action.
Such as having it open Twitter by saying “Twitter” and then saying “tweet” to start a new tweet. The Verge’s Dieter Bohn does a great job of showing how this actually works in practice.
It can’t do everything just yet
While it has received a vast improvement, Voice Access can’t do everything yet. You can have it open an app like messages or WhatsApp and then tell it to send a message, but if you decide you want to back out of that message you can’t tell it to go back just by saying the contextual word. As the cursor would likely still be stuck inside the context box of the message
In this case you’d need to speak the number that’s next to the back arrow somewhere on the screen. And from there you could say home or the name of another app or system feature and it should launch it. You can even have it adjust the volume by saying turn up the volume.
For the most part everything works very well. But it’s something you really have to experience or see for yourself to understand just how well.
One thing I left out of my Android 11 beta hands on was the improved Voice Access, which now understand screen context and content. That was a mistake – it’s actually incredible.
You don’t have to use a grid or button numbers, you can just say what’s on the screen. Watch: pic.twitter.com/wXidxZGVjt
— Dieter Bohn (@backlon) June 10, 2020