Voice control
navigate your phone by talking to it
Improved accessibility is another key feature of Apple’s 2019 updates across of all of its devices. Dictation has been available across iOS for a while, but now you can control your iPhone with your voice too. Voice commands allow you to open and navigate apps, type and use gestures such as pinching, tapping and swiping.
You can overlay a grid onscreen to allow you to specify where you want to tap and then distinguish between, say, a tap and a long press. When you select a grid number, iOS zooms in on that square. You can also choose to see visual confirmation of the commands you give.
iOS 13 comes with a master list of commands, which can be found in the Settings app, such as ‘Open Control Centre’ or ‘Go home.’ Voice Control Settings also allow you to specify a language, customise commands and teach Voice Control new words to add to its vocabulary. The ability to create new commands could be crucial – the long strings of commands necessary to complete certain tasks are likely to take some time to learn using Voice Control’s preferred syntax. By creating custom commands, you can bypass that.
Intelligent design
Voice Control uses the same artificial intelligence that powers Siri, so is smart enough to recognise menu items and dialog box options by name, making it even easier to use.
Testing in the public beta of iOS 13 suggested that having Voice Control switched on drains the battery noticeably more quickly. But that may have changed in the final version.
Battery aside, it’s easy to see Voice Control moving beyond accessibility and becoming something we all use regularly.