As I’ve noted before, Voice Control is somewhat hit and miss with its accuracy. Just because it doesn’t get things right every time, though, doesn’t mean that you can’t use some tips and techniques to help the chance of an accurate response to your Voice Control commands.
General Voice Control Tips
Whether you’re using it for the phone or music:
- Wait until the Voice Control tone has finished before you speak. If you speak while the tone is playing, what you say will be missed
- Don’t pause too long after tone as this can confuse Voice Control
- Saying “cancel” before an action is completely started will stop it, though it can be tricky to cancel before whatever action is underway has started
Music
Voice Control is generally weakest with music, but these tips can help improve the experience.
- Voice Control can’t play individual songs, only albums, playlists, or artists, so don’t ask for songs
- Be as specific as possible: you’ll get a better result out of “play artist Ani DiFranco” than “play Ani DiFranco”
- If a band has “the” in its name, be sure to say “the” – Voice Control listens for it
- To shuffle within a playlist, say “shuffle”
- To pause playback, say “pause” or “pause music”
- You can use Genius to create a playlist based on the song you’re listening to by saying “genius,” “play more like this,” or “play more songs like this”
Voice Dialing
Voice Control tends to work best with the phone. These tips will make it work even better.
- Use the first and last name of the person you’re calling
- If the contact you’re calling has more than one phone number, use first name, last name, and the name of phone as assigned in contact (home, office, mobile, etc.)
- Voice Control has trouble with possessives
- If you have two contacts that Voice Control regularly confuses, give one (or both) and nickname. Do this by going to the contact, tapping “Edit” and then tapping “add field.” Tap “nickname” and assign one.
