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Is there a way to activate Voice Actions from the lock screen?

I've abandoned the iPhone world, and only miss this one feature. On my iPhone I could press and hold my home button to activate Siri. From there, I could run all kinds of voice commands... The way I see it on my is that I have to unlock the phone and swipe up. Then say "google" to activate Voice.

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possible duplicate of Is there a way to speak "Send" in order to send an SMS? – t0mm13b Jan 16 at 23:26
while both of my questions are in regards to voice action, the other question is whether or not I can say "send" to send a message. This one is whether or not I can activate voice actions from the lock screen. The way I see it... they're very different questions. – Chase Florell Jan 16 at 23:27
mea culpa... :) – t0mm13b Jan 16 at 23:28
Highly doubt it, as lock screen would have to have the functionality for voice actions, maybe customise the lockscreen, or there's a widget out there to do just that...? – t0mm13b Jan 16 at 23:35

3 Answers

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As with your other question, I think you'll have to use an app other than Google's Voice Actions to get this functionality (at least at the current time). This is another feature that Dragon supports, though.

If you enable the "Background wake-up" setting then you can use the phrase "Hi Dragon" to launch the app from anywhere, including when the screen is locked. For that matter, you can say "Hi Dragon" while the screen is off and it will wake up the device and launch Dragon for you without requiring any manual input at all.

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This sounds awesome. I hope they release Dragon for Canadian users. – Chase Florell Jan 17 at 2:04
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@ChaseFlorell: Hm, that's unfortunate. You could possibly try sideloading it if you wanted (it's free on Play anyway). There's evidently an XDA thread with .apk links: forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1953099 – eldarerathis♦ Jan 17 at 2:21
And that's the sound of you flying WAY over my head. What is "sideloading"? XDA? and ".apk"? – Chase Florell Jan 17 at 2:32
Oh dope. Ok, so I found the apk here and then used AirDroid to install the app through my laptop's web browser... time to see if it does what I need... thanks. – Chase Florell Jan 17 at 2:40
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I got back iOS-like headset control on the Google Nexus 4 (N4) such as solving the voice command problem from a locked phone with the headset button using "Headset Button Controller" from the Play Store.

I solved this one eventually, but there are many pitfalls. So, this is how I got it to work:

First, you can't seem to use the long button press for anything; so, don't use it. Second, set one of the other button press combos (I used triple press) to "Voice Search" and say yes to wake up dialogue box. Then, go the advanced settings and select "Run in foreground" and "Prevent Sleep Mode".

This actually get you to Google Voice Search from locked, screen off phone and allows voice commmands.

The other Voice control actions don't seem to work.

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up vote 1 down vote

I wanted to do the same thing but the long press feature seems to be locked down by Google. My work around was to install Headset Button Controller and bind three button presses in a row to voice search which works great. There is a trial version but I was happy to pay a few Euro for the feature.

Incidentally, the app also fixed the headset button not responding sometimes when the screen was locked by enabling Prevent sleep mode while the headset is plugged in. Its in the advanced settings area.

I am using a Galaxy Nexus on 4.2.2

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