I would like to open the keyboard programmatically and have it start doing voice recognition instantly without the user pressing the mic button. I know how to implement Spe
Unfortunately this is not possible, but it very much should be.
I went searching for a way to do this when I needed to use offline speech recognition as a 'hack' - but I couldn't achieve it.
I can only suggest you submit an AOSP enhancement request regarding InputType. The following addition would be helpful:
android:inputType="voice"
If you place a link to it back here, I'm sure many would star it.
EDIT - I finally got around to doing it