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.

EDIT 2: Here’s an even better, more universally applicable description of what I’m after - copied from a response I gave to another comment:

Imagine someone doing some relatively mindless menial job such as working an assembly line, janitorial work, chauffer - something where your mind is relatively unoccupied, but you’re not free to look at and/or touch your device (whether it be due to practicality, or job rules). While doing that job, I want to be able to have the device read and interact with something of interest to me at that moment (ADHD is a fickle mistress), rather than just relying on podcasts with predefined content. Kind of like having someone next to me doing all the interfacing between me and the device.

EDIT 3: I added a comment with some news on options that may come close enough to doing the job which I’ve come across since posting.

  • @SanctimoniousApeOP
    1•1 month ago

    Replying to my own post in case anyone’s following this (still too new to Lemmy to know if that’s a thing - guess I’ll look into it after this).

    Apparently, Moto may be working on something that fills this need. The promo video in this article only demonstrates things I think Google Assistant might already be capable of (or maybe slightly more), but the article states what they’re working on involves using apps on your phone to do things rather than just being a microphone and speaker for stuff that actually happens mostly on Google’s servers. Crossing my fingers that includes doing what I want rather than just being focused on buying things as demonstrated in the teaser video.

    In the meantime, I’ve stumbled across the fact that Google’s built-in TalkBack feature has support for keyboard shortcuts. This likely means I can use a small handheld Bluetooth game controller along with an app to map the buttons to the appropriate key presses in order to move around the screen, and thus control the Android device without looking at or touching it. That means using Google Assistant to launch the apps, and the controller to actually use it via TalkBack. I’ll likely test this next weekend & report back if anyone’s interested.

    ETA: Forgot to mention: remembered that my kid has an iPad required by his school some years ago, but so far as we can see the capabilities are roughly on par with Android so switching platforms doesn’t seem to be the answer.