Using iPhone 3G S and iPhone 4 Voice Control Commands
Contributed by qmchenry 
Tagged: Apple iPhone Apple’s latest hardware upgrade for the iPhone line, the iPhone 3G S, adds voice control capabilities. Without looking at the device, using voice control you can easily dial the phone using numbers or a contact’s name, and control the iPod with various commands. (Updated as these can be performed with iPhone 4 as well) Here are the details:
Voice control can be accessed at any time by pressing the home button (the round button just below the screen) for a few seconds. When Voice Control is ready for you to speak, your iPhone will vibrate and chime twice quickly. Then it’s time to overcome your stage fright and speak your command.
Here are some available commands:
Dial 1 800 5 5 5 1 2 1 2
Dialing by numbers works remarkably well, even understanding “eight hundred” in addition to “eight zero zero.”
Dial Jennifer mobile
Accessing phone numbers from your address book is simple. Use the contact’s name followed by the specific phone number you want to call (work, home, mobile, pager, etc.).
Call Jennifer
Call is interchangeable with dial. In this example, just the contact’s name is spoken. If the contact has one phone number, that number will be dialed. Otherwise, the display will show the contact’s name at top plus the text “Multiple Numbers” just below. The iPhone will tell you which phone numbers are available (i.e., “Jennifer, mobile or work?”). Tell it which one you want to call and it will do the rest.
Play album (album name)
Play playlist (playlist name)
Play songs by (artist name)
Play artist (artist name)
These commands provide a variety of ways to select music to play.
Play more like this
This command creates and plays a genius playlist from the current song.
Play music
Play
Pause music
Pause
These commands start or stop playing, just like hitting the play/pause button on an iPod.
Next track
Next
Previous track
Previous
These commands do what you’d expect, behaving like the next and previous buttons on an iPod.
What song is playing?
What’s playing?
Who plays this song?
Who sings this song?
These commands all do the same thing. The song title and artist will be spoken by the iPhone.
Shuffle
This simple command will toggle the state of the shuffle setting. It will also tell you what the shuffle state is to confirm that it is what you want.
Davak edit:
I just noticed that in iOS4, that the following works…
What time is it?
If you find any more voice commands, please share them in the comments!
You may also like -
Verizon vs AT&T iPhone 4 DeathMatch
Tech-Recipes Debates: Apple's iOS vs Google's Android
iPhone 4S: Apple Versus Android Fans Debate
iPhone 4 FaceTime Tutorial: Enable, Disable, and Free Wifi CallsiPhone: Transfer Voice Memos from iPhone to Computer
OS X: Import and Transfer Pictures from iPhone
iPhone: Control iPod functions through headphones
Essential iPhone and iPad Tutorials
David Kirk said on June 24, 2009
@qmchenry Thanks for the great tutorial. This is much better than my random-yellings driving down the road. ;)
Michael J Kormendy said on June 24, 2009
How do I turn it off? … Before when I pressed and held the home button it shut down the application running.
Quinn McHenry said on June 24, 2009
There doesn’t appear to be a way to turn it off (other than an option when the phone is locked with a passcode). But there is still a way to force quit an application that’s gone astray:
Press and hold the power button (top of iPhone) until the red “slide to power off” slider appears (a few seconds). Then press and hold the home button for a few seconds until the home screen reappears.
Michael J Kormendy said on June 24, 2009
Arg,.. I like the old way of just holding the home button while the application was running .. it used to shut down applications gone astray very nicely.
Oh well.
David Simoni said on June 30, 2009
I was hoping that I would be able to rate my music using the voice prompt. Anybody else have that feature on their wish list??
chris said on July 2, 2009
how do I shuffle all songs from all albums?
Anonymous said on July 3, 2009
Oh, totes. That would rock.
Peter H. Muller said on July 10, 2009
It sounds great, but just an hour ago I received a call from a friend who said “it doesn’t work very well at all, it dials everybody except the person I want to reach”
I told him, I discontinued it for the very same reason. I do understand Apple has another app doing the same thing that will work better, will check that out instead, this thing definitely doesn’t work. By the way, I read about this auto dial thing in USA today, guy also didn;t think much of it. There you have three negative experiences.
Anonymous said on July 13, 2009
Apple is great when creating iPhone 3G S Voice Control. It’s wonderful.
David Stuart Podd said on July 18, 2009
Just found out voice commands also work through headphones, just hold down middle button on headphones and speak.
Don’t even have to take your phone out of your pocket, cool!
fabiola said on August 13, 2009
3g voice commands via headphones are really great! especially when walking
davak said on August 22, 2009
Thanks! Great additional info.
Anonymous said on September 18, 2009
Apple rocks!!! Commands in russian has almost 100% accuracy.
Anonymous said on September 26, 2009
How can I switch off the voice control for ipod?… the voice control prompt keeps coming up when I am running on the tread mill! Its very very annoying!!
Anonymous said on October 14, 2009
My iphone voice control is going crazy. While walking the dog it will pop up without me pressing the home button, shuffle songs, skip songs, fastforward songs, pause them. It will interrupt songs without prompting all the time. What do i do? Can I turn off this feature?
Anonymous said on October 15, 2009
To be able to ask for the time would be great…..
bz said on October 16, 2009
I had the exact same problem… I think it’s a faulty switch in the headset. I just got mine replaced and hope the problem will go away.
arash said on October 24, 2009
me either
Anonymous said on October 25, 2009
Vlingo is so much more accurate that iPhone Voice Control, and it’s free. I used it very successfully on my Blackberry Bold, and it works just as well on my iPhone 3G S.
Anonymous said on October 28, 2009
Hi Ross, Did you get any answers to your comments, I’m having the same problems however I keep calling people without knowing it and leaving long messages on friends voice mails, very annoying.
Rob
Brian Paternoster said on January 20, 2010
i would like to turn off voice command as when its in my pocket it dials random phone numbers is their a patch to disable it??????
Anonymous said on February 7, 2010
Don’t ever do turn it on. Once you turn it on, the only way to reset it is to restore the software.
Anonymous said on February 15, 2010
Yes completely was expecting this too!
Tiago said on February 28, 2010
I got this on my 32gb 3rd Gen iPod touch. Love it. (I would also like to add that you can turn it on by holding the play/pause button on the earphone remote.)
Scott said on March 29, 2010
Rob – Did you find a way to stop voice control thing? (apart from using the passcode thing)? Thanks , Scott
roberto said on March 31, 2010
I am uncomfortible with the fact that the ipod touch accessible is through voice controle what is the sence of a pass code ??
is there a way to lock the voice controle?
Scott said on March 31, 2010
This is the only way I have found to do it…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE46y1bUpfQ
It requires a jailbroken phone. Ive not done it to mine yet.
If you (or anyone!) finds a way of doing it without jailbreaking, please let me know!
temp@scotthammond.co.uk
Thanks :)
Scott
Anonymous said on April 6, 2010
How to activate voice control in my iphone??
Toms said on May 16, 2010
I have same problem with turning voice control on while in pocket. I think you have to choose the option of setting password and then turing the voice off. It will stay off when you deactivate the password. Will check if that really solves the porblem.
Abc said on June 21, 2010
I keep asking it “what is this song?” and it always says no music playing or phoning someone from my contacts list
Tazbud33 said on June 27, 2010
Did you ever figure out how to turn this off, I have the same problem with voice command coming on in my pocket.
Anonymous said on June 27, 2010
Updated for “What time is it?”
A1832955 said on July 1, 2010
That’s what was just happening to me. It also wouldn’t recognize purchased songs as music, only stuff I’d explicitly dragged from iTunes.
TheDov said on July 13, 2010
You can also call by nickname as well. If you have a contact John Smith with nickname “Dad”, you can say “Call Dad” and you’ll hear back “Calling John Smith”
Ads said on August 13, 2010
“Cancel” or “Stop” terminates the Voice Control application only :) perfect for when running background apps ;)
mike hefner said on October 2, 2010
i was hoping i could comand it to start an application but obviusly not :(
MacroStuff said on October 14, 2010
You can. Just ask, “What time is it?”
frozt said on November 22, 2010
same goes for me… i keep asking “what’s playin” and it says no music…. what a bummer….
frozt said on November 23, 2010
Well it just occurred to me, this started happening after I enabled restrictions in settings>general>restrictions. I just disabled restrictions and my iPod started responding properly.
Jasonrichards74 said on November 27, 2010
this feature does not work. I have tried it maybe 15 times, and it worked once. Got tired of calling the wrong person, so gave up on it. too bad.
Jordan said on January 3, 2011
X ACTLY
David said on February 11, 2011
Me- “Call Kathy”
Iphone4 “Calling Malik
press end call and tried again.
Me- “Call Kathy”
Iphone4 “Calling Danny”
Me- “Call Kathy”
Iphone4 “Calling Malik
press end call and just use speed dial. .
This is the worse voice cmd i have ever used.