Gboard May Soon Gain Hands-Free Voice Typing on Pixel Phones

Google revealed its next-genGoogle Assistantfor Pixel phones last year at Google I/O ’19 event. Among other features, the company teased ahands-free speech transcriptionmechanism and it is now reportedly coming to Gboard.

According to an APK teardown by9to5Google, Gboard may soon let users chat hands-free. Triggering the feature, however,requires tapping on the mic buttonpresent to the top right corner of the virtual keyboard.

There will be a total of three handy commands that you can use to control this feature – Close, Delete, and Send it. Presumably, you can either tap on one of these options or just say the word.“When ready just say “Send it” or say “Delete” to start over,”reads the description.Image: 9to5Google

When you’re using the feature, Google Assistant’s light bar will appear at the bottom portion to represent and visualize speech patterns. This behavior hints that the new hands-free typing experience will probably be limited to the next-gen Assistant. Google Assistant with compact UI is alsotesting the light bar, though.

Moreover, Google teased the feature on the next-gen Assistant at Google I/O ’19. In the demonstration, the feature was used to compose an email on Gmail app. If the feature is limited to next-gen Assistant, most of the Android users will miss out on it.

It is worth noting thatGoogle has not started testing the new hands-free voice typingin beta. For now, you will have to wait to get your hands on this feature. It will be interesting to see if the software giant manages to add this neat feature in both Pixel and non-Pixel phones.

Featured Image Courtesy: 9to5Google

Subin B

Subin writes about consumer tech, software, and security. He secretly misses the headphone jack while pretending he’s better off with the wireless freedom.

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