Possible to open “Speak Now” dialog programmatically?

Question

Is it possible to open the "Speak Now" dialog programmatically?

Currently, if the user taps my 'Search' button, a dialog opens and I have the soft keyboard open automatically so the user doesn't need to tap the textedit field.

I'd like to offer an alternate 'Search by voice' that will open the dialog and have the "Speak now" window open automatically. So the user doesn't have to find and tap the 'mic' button on the keyboard.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Yes, it is possible. Take a look at ApiDemos sample in the Android SDK. There is an activity named VoiceRecognition, it utilizes RecognizerIntent.

Basically, all you need to do is to craete a proper intent with some extras and then read the results.

private static final int VOICE_RECOGNITION_REQUEST_CODE = 1234;

private void startVoiceRecognitionActivity() {
    Intent intent = new Intent(RecognizerIntent.ACTION_RECOGNIZE_SPEECH);
    // identifying your application to the Google service
    intent.putExtra(RecognizerIntent.EXTRA_CALLING_PACKAGE, getClass().getPackage().getName());
    // hint in the dialog
    intent.putExtra(RecognizerIntent.EXTRA_PROMPT, "Speech recognition demo");
    // hint to the recognizer about what the user is going to say
    intent.putExtra(RecognizerIntent.EXTRA_LANGUAGE_MODEL,
                    RecognizerIntent.LANGUAGE_MODEL_FREE_FORM);
    // number of results
    intent.putExtra(RecognizerIntent.EXTRA_MAX_RESULTS, 5);
    // recognition language
    intent.putExtra(RecognizerIntent.EXTRA_LANGUAGE,"en-US");
    startActivityForResult(intent, VOICE_RECOGNITION_REQUEST_CODE);
}

@Override
protected void onActivityResult(int requestCode, int resultCode, Intent data) {
    if (requestCode == VOICE_RECOGNITION_REQUEST_CODE && resultCode == RESULT_OK) {
        ArrayList<String> matches = data.getStringArrayListExtra(
                    RecognizerIntent.EXTRA_RESULTS);
        // do whatever you want with the results
    }
    super.onActivityResult(requestCode, resultCode, data);
}