FAQ

When I say a command with AutoVoice, a toast appears saying that commands were recognized, but the profile isn’t triggered in Tasker. Why?

These are some possibilities:

  • you haven’t saved your Tasker configuration. Back out from Tasker with the back key to do this
  • Tasker is disabled
  • The AutoVoice profile is disabled
  • Your command filter does not match what you said
  • The task is executing, but you don’t realize it for some reason
  • If you’re using AutoVoice with the Google Assistant or Amazon Echo your device might not be configured to receive these commands. Open AutoVoice > Devices to register your device and try again.

If none of these is your problem,  try this:

  • clear logs
  • enable system logs
  • do command
  • export logs and paste them here along with a description of your issue

 Why doesn’t AutoVoice work with my phone’s Google Assistant?

AutoVoice does work on the Assistant on your phone but not like with Google Now where you could simply say your command. You now have to say “Ask AutoVoice to do something”. Check this video for an example:

Also, check here for other alternatives.

If I set some settings with an AutoVoice command, the settings are only active for a few moments and then go back to being what they were!

In Tasker, long-press your profile, choose Settings and in the Settings uncheck “Restore Settings”. That should take care of it. 🙂

Why does the AutoVoice process consume so much RAM at times?

You may notice that, if you enter the process’ details, that the process that is consuming more RAM is the In-App billing process from the Google Play app. That process is shared between all the apps on your system that use in-app billing, so the memory consumption is not just for AutoVoice but for all apps combined. The reason it appears under AutoVoice is probably because it was the last process that used it.

 

What happened to the Google Now API XPosed module? It doesn’t work anymore

The good news is, you probably don’t need it anymore. AutoVoice now has native Google Now integration. Just enable the AutoVoice accessibility service and you should be good to go.

The API needs to be updated every time theres a Google Search update now. Check here for the latest version.

If you have a rooted moto x there’s still an alternative here

How do I get offline voice recognition with AutoVoice?

Unfortunately there’s no way to do this at the time of writing because Google disabled it. If it ever starts working again this will be updated to reflect that.

 

If I press the bluetooth headset button I get a prompt asking me if I want to use the dialer or AutoVoice. If I set AutoVoice to default, then I can’t make calls anymore because everything goes to AutoVoice now!

First of all, to get your phone calls back go to system settings->apps->AutoVoice->Clear Defaults. 🙂

This is the intended behaviour. In tablets, where making calls isn’t possible, this can be a handy setting, since you won’t use it for anything else anyway.

To use the BT headset button on your phone you normally have to long-press it, instead of short-pressing it (on some headsets it may be the other way around). The long press normally activates voice dialing in Android, so you can safely replace that with AutoVoice. If you still want voice dialing, you can do it with AutoVoice itself using this trick.

 

I can’t get the long press bluetooth button action to get picked up by AutoVoice! It always goes to the Voice Dialer and I can’t clear its defaults!

If this is happening you may have to disable /system/app/VoiceDialer.apk in order to get the prompt for which app to use when you press the Bluetooth button. It doesn’t have defaults to clear in settings, so just remove or rename it.

Also, here’s a tip from “Cory”:

On the play store is an app called Smart Bluetooth Headset (which looks like a worthwhile app in its own right).  It supports remapping the buttons on your bluetooth headset to various other functions.  It has support for invoking a tasker task, so I thought I might augment AutoVoice/Tasker with it.

I installed it, and configured it to launch a popup task,  It worked!

Even better, after installing the app, when I short-pressed the headset button, I got Android’s “Select Default App” dialog.  AutoVoice was one of the choices, so I picked it (with “Run Once”).  (This dialog had not been showing up for me before).  Success!  My tasker profile that had been configured to trigger on the BT Button Press executed, and my popup task executed.

Finally, I uninstalled “Smart Bluetooth Headset” and tried short-clicking the headset button again.  More Success!  The “Select Default App” dialog showed up again, and I was able to get AutoVoice to invoke my popup task again.

My best guess is that the default action for my bluetooth buttons had gotten stuck on voice dialer, and something was going wrong with clearing the defaults?  Installing Smart Bluetooth Headset must have signaled that the default choice should be made again, much like when installing a new home screen replacement or web browser.

 

When I press or long press my Bluetooth headset’s button, nothing seems to happen.

Please  turn on System logs, then go into the AutoVoice logs and see if anything comes up in the System tab when you press or long press the bluetooth button. Make sure you are pressing the button that is usually used to initiate voice dialing on your device.

 

When I use the AutoVoice Recognize action with the Bluetooth Headset option enabled, I can’t get any voice command to be recognized!

Try starting  “AutoVoice Recognize” without the Bluetooth Headset option enabled and in the same Task, right after, enable Bluetooth sound redirection with the “AutoVoice Ctrl BT” action. That is known to work in some cases.

 

When I use AutoVoice Continuous, if I have music playing, it mutes randomly. What can I do?

That is a side effect of using continuous listening. Unfortunately if I didn’t do this, you would hear an annoying “starting recognition” notification sound every 5 seconds.

 

Does AutoVoice continuous drain my battery?

It drains your battery considerably. That’s why I always recommend you only having it on when you know you’re going to need it. i.e. no point in having it on when you’re on your commute for example, because of all the noise. It would make sense to have it on for 10 minutes for instance when you get home, so you can turn on lights or whatever. Make use of all the Tasker conditions so you intelligently turn it on when it makes sense.

 

When I press the Bluetooth headset button, the Google voice prompt comes up and goes away almost immediately. What can I do?

You probably configured the headset button to start voice recognition in Tasker right? If you did that, you should disable the “Auto Recognize BT” option in the AutoVoice settings.

 

How do I use a different language for AutoVoice?

Go into your Android Settings->Language and Input->Voice Search->Language and change it to whatever you like. You can also change the language in a specific “AutoVoice Recognize” action in Tasker, so you can potentially have a different language for each recognize action.

 

My AutoVoice continuous stops by itself after a while. Why?

Android is free to kill any background process if it is low on memory, including the AutoVoice continuous process, unless there’s a persistent notification showing that the process is running. So, when you enable continuous mode, enable the persistent notification in the “AutoVoice Continuous” Tasker configuration so the process doesn’t get killed after a while.

Also on Android only one app can use the microphone at a time, so for example Google Now can stop AutoVoice continuous if it is used for voice recognition. You should stop AutoVoice continuous when entering Google now (or Google GEL Launcher with background voice recognition enabled) and start it when exiting Google Now. You can use Tasker’s app context for that for example.

Also check Jason van Horn’s tip here

I sometimes get a Missing Permission Exception with AutoVoice! What can I do?

This is known to happen sometimes with cyanogenmod users. To make it go way, uninstall and reinstall both AutoVoice app and unlock key.

 

How do I get rid of the “Didn’t catch that” screen?

Check out this example on how to deal with it

How do I use AutoVoice with Google Now?

Follow the directions here:

 

I can’t get the Google Now XPosed module to detect AutoVoice as a plugin.

Please reinstall AutoVoice after installing the XPosed module.

 

When I use the Google Now integration in AutoVoice, the Google Now search is also executed. Is there a way to prevent this?

No, there is not. But you can do a “Go Home” action in Tasker which will close Google Now and not show the search. This also cancels out any action Google Now might try to take like creating a reminder, or calling someone.

 

Why do my variables not get correctly populated when using regex?

You probably are using unnamed groups. In AutoVoice, you must name all groups for the variables to be correct.

One neat trick though, is to ignore groups with “?:”, so you could do this for example “(?:turn|change) to channel (?<channel>[0-9]+)” and the (turn|change) group would be ignored, making the “channel” variable populate correctly. 🙂

You can try out your regexes here. Make sure to change the regex language to PCRE so named groups will work 🙂

 

When I long-press my Bluetooth Headset’s button while my device’s screen is off, the screen turns off, but the device is still locked. If I unlock it, a prompt that allows me to choose the app to use shows up, but disappears to quickly to select the app. What can I do?

User David T has a solution: I used the Secure Settings Plugin. In Tasker/Plugin/SecureSettings, you have to turn the Keyguard off. Security in Android is a real struggle and cause of bugs. In this case it’s an advantage. Having Keyguard turned off in Secure Settings you can normally use your phone/launcher but somehow the phone still thinks it’s locked. Now long press: Menu to set default app pops up (the one for long press while device locked), tap “always” and your preferred app. Now enable the Keyguard again (via Secure Settings) and it’s done! 🙂

How can I trigger multiple devices with AutoVera with one AutoVoice command?

Check here.

Basically you create a natural language voice command in AutoVoice that allows you to say any number of devices and states (on or off) and then in Tasker you go through each one and execute the command 🙂

How does the Replacements feature in AutoVoice work?

For example, if you want a voice condition to be “I am your son”, but Google always recognizes your voice command as “I am your sun”, you can set the replacement like “sun=son”, so that whenever “sun” shows up, it’ll be replaced with “son”.

Why does AutoVoice not work with Android Auto for me?

It’s probably language related. Please check here for a fix.