Droidcon NYC 2015

Voice actions enable users to interact with mobile apps using natural speech patterns, enabling hands-free behaviors in situations where the user is multi-tasking or otherwise occupied. Consistent support for voice actions across Android devices (phones, tablets, Wear) makes them a perfect enabler for ubiquitous computing experiences where actions are auto-magically handled by the right app, in the right context, across all devices potentially owned by that user.

While voice actions focus simply on triggering the relevant app, the Voice Interaction API (announced in Android M Preview) allows the app to engage with the user in a follow-up dialog to further clarify actions (e.g., confirmation) or narrow it down (e.g., select from alternatives).

In this talk we’ll look at support for Voice Actions and the Voice Interaction API in Android, explore different usage contexts and walk through code snippets that show how we can leverage them in our own applications