Google’s “Voice Access” is decent for controlling the device through verbal commands, but you have to be looking at the screen to get results - it won’t read anything back to you.

Google’s “TalkBack” will read things on screen to you, but you have to interact with the screen physically (never mind the significant change in how interactions work - which I understand the need for - but it’s still a serious mental PITA to switch between the two interaction methodologies frequently).

Is there no way to just interact with it entirely verbally? A (very) simple example of what I’m looking for:

  1. “What are the current Google News headlines?”
  2. Starts reading each one aloud, along with the names of the sources.
  3. “Read the article about Trump caught making out with Elon from AP News.”
  4. Proceeds to load the article & read it aloud.

(Yeah, I know there are podcasts for this - it’s meant to illustrate the basic idea of completely verbal interaction with the device, not be an actual problem I’m looking for someone to provide a solution to.)

It just seems to me that we should be able to do this by now - especially with all the AI blow-up over the past couple of years. Can anybody point me to a usable solution to accomplish this?

TIA.

EDIT: I thought of a better example (I think), because it occurred to me that the above one could (sort of) be done with a Google Home speaker. I’m looking to be able to interact with Android apps verbally wherever possible, so my better example is “What are the latest posts made to the ‘No Stupid Questions’ community on Lemmy?” So far as I know, Google Home is not able to do such a thing. I’d like to tell Android to open my Lemmy client and start reading post headlines until it hit one I wanted to have it open & read to me.

I’m basically looking to use apps verbally to fill in gaps that Google Home/Assistant don’t cover.

  • Skezlarr@aussie.zone
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    5 hours ago

    I might be misunderstanding the question, so if you’re looking to make an existing android device you have work like this, please ignore the below.

    Maybe a Google Nest Mini would do what you’re looking for? It’s definitely got the ability to be interacted with entirely verbally, but I guess the downside is a smaller selection of apps that do work with it (there is a list on the Google store of which apps it works with)