Thursday 6 September 2012

Use Google Voice Search From Anywhere on Your iPhone



If you're a fan of Google's Voice Search then there're cool ways to invoke it on your jailbroken iPhone. While the "Just Talk" feature in the Google Search app is quite cool, you have to exit the current app and launch the Google Search app for it to work.

VoiceSearch is a new jailbreak tweak that allows you to access Google's Voice Search from anywhere in the iOS.

The jailbreak tweak essentially adds an Activator action, which can be configured via Settings that allows you to invoke VoiceSearch from anywhere on your iPhone using say a double tap on the Status bar.

As you can see in the screenshot below, it pop-ups a window with a speakerphone (and Cancel and Done buttons), which allows you to speak your search queries instead of typing. When you're done speaking the search query and tap on the Done button, it opens up Safari (or Chrome if you've made it the default browser on your iPhone) and automatically does the Google Search.


 

It would be nice if the tweak automatically did the Google Search after you're done speaking the search query like Google Search apps' "Just Talk" feature, so you don't have to tap on the Done button.

Since the tweak uses Google Search, it automatically uses your location and shows you relevant business results near your current location.

Google Search by voice also supports quite a few languages. It's supported for American, British, Australian, and Indian English, plus French, Italian, Spanish, German, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Czech, Russian, Polish, Turkish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Dutch, Afrikaans, South African English, Indonesian, Malaysian, Zulu, and Arabic.

VoiceSearch is available for free in Cydia.

Alternatively (many of you probably already know it), you can also set the Activator action (Settings -> Activator -> Anywhere) to launch the Google Search app (App Store link) and enable the "Just Talk" feature (Launch the app -> Tap on the Settings icon at the top and navigate to Voice Search ->  Just talk toggle to enable it). So you can just lift your iPhone to the ear, wait for beep and get the search results by talking into the phone.

So try it out and see how it goes.

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