Voice control and typing into text boxes

By Mira, 22 September, 2019

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

Hello everyone,
I have a problem with voice control and wanted to ask you for help. When I want to enter text, voice control doesn't do it because the text field is not active, I would have to double tap on the text field to activate it but I feel that doesn't make sense because voice control should be designed to use the phone hands-free.
So here's an example of what I mean, I say:
* Open messages
* Tap Nick
And here is where the problem starts: I try saying type hi, text hi, i also tried saying dictation mode and then saying hi. But it doesn't work. The text field is not active, the keyboard doesn't show up either.
Then I tried: tap text field, double tap text field, voice over activate text field, etc... but no luck.
The same problem occurs when voice over is off.
I also set my phone to english (normally it's in french). to make sure that voice control can recognize elements on the screen.
I have this same problem for months (I run the beta) and reported it already, but for other people it seems to work just fine, so maybe there's a setting somewhere that text fields are active when they are there, or I can say a command that brings the text field up.
I hope someone has an idea.
Thanks in advance and have a nice sunday.
Mira

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Comments

By Piotr Machacz on Thursday, September 26, 2019 - 18:25

The "tap *whatever*" command needs you to say the label of the item. For VoiceOver that's whatever it says before the type. So, in your example for messages, notice that if you touch the text field with VoiceOver it says "Message, iMessage/Text message, text field." The first part, "Message" is the label of the control and what voice control is listening out for. So, to start typing, simply say "tap message" and you should be good.

This is why for sighted people Voice Control has the numbered and name overlays you can bring up with a voice command, they visually display these labels. With VO you just have to say whatever it calls a control. This may be different from app to app. for writing a message, in messages this text field is just called message. In Mail, it's called message body... and so on.

By Shawn T on Thursday, September 26, 2019 - 18:25

In reply to by Piotr Machacz

You can also navigate to and double tap the field with VO, although I didn't know about the labels. Thanks very much for this.

By Tangela on Thursday, September 26, 2019 - 18:25

Worth noting that you don't even need to say open/tap/double tap. You can actually just say the labels of things, messages, person name, message. Dictation mode, optionally, dictate your message, using all the nice editing commands in dictation mode as needed, and then simply say send!

By Mira on Thursday, September 26, 2019 - 18:25

Thank you for your help, now it works! Never thought of saying just the labels.
But now the problem is voice control picks everything up voice over says (even at the lowest volume). Is there a work around for that, other than wearing a headset? VoiceOver shuts up when i use the dictation on the keyboard, but for voice control it repeats everything I say and that makes voice control type it again... vicius circle. :D

By Trenton Matthews on Thursday, September 26, 2019 - 18:25

In reply to by Mira

You can always pause Voice Control at anytime by saying ‘Go To Sleep,” and resume it by saying ‘Wake Up.”
For me when using VoiceOver while Voice Control is running, I just talk normal to it. Also, unless I am in an edit box, I have never had VO talk over me when using VC unless i tell it to do something, such as swiping or something like that.