How to Voice Control Your Windows 11 PC

Microsoft has added some new features in Windows 11 and voice control is one of them. Microsoft made somany changes to its Windows 11 voice control app. Using it, you can control your PC with your voice.

In contrast to the ‘Voice Control‘ capability, ‘Speech Recognition can only be used for voice-to-text conversion, but ‘Voice Control’ enables you to navigate your PC by interacting with the UI components on your screen.

Along with helping visually impaired users, the ‘Voice Control‘ feature helps users to run on their Windows 11 machine hands-free; or when you just want to lay in bed and ask your computer to play music.

The function is interesting to both experienced and new users, but you must first enable it in the Settings app. Here is how to use and enable voice control in Windows 11.

How to Voice Control your Windows 11 PC

The first thing you should do is, enable and configure voice control in your Windows 11.  It is a very easy process. So here are the steps:

Step 1: To enable the feature, First open the Windows 11 Settings with Windows + I button on your keyboard or open the start menu with the windows button and then search for Settings.

Step 2: Then find and click on Accessibility in the left sidebar.

Step 2: In the right sidebar, scroll down and then click on the Speech option under the interaction section.

Step 3: In the speech settings, find the Voice access option and then click on the toggle switch to enable it.

Step 4: If you want to enable the voice search feature when Windows starts then enable the option called Start voice access after you sign in to your PC.

Step 5: If you are using Windows 11 for the first time then you will be asked to download the speed model. So click on the download button and wait till it is running. Make sure you have a working internet connection to download the speech files.

Step 6: Once done, you will see a voice access guide window on your screen. Here click on the already connected microphone below the Microphone tab. If not connected, click on Add new > click on the ‘angular arrow’ to continue to the next options.

Step 7: Click on the Start Guide button to understand the basics of Voice access on your Windows 11. This guide is for all new users by Microsoft.

Method 1: Enable or disable voice access auto-start with a registry tweak

Step 1: Open the Start menu and then search for Regedit and press enter.

Step 3: Then navigate to the following key using the address bar in the registry editor.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Accessibility

Step 4: Create a new string called Configuration and then set its value data to 1 to enable auto-enable voice access in Windows 11.

Method 2: Navigating your PC with Voice Access

Once you activated voice access on your Windows 11 PC, here is how to use it to access most of the apps and navigate your Windows 11 tools.

You can use Windows 11 voice control feature to access apps and tools and navigate to different Windows apps and settings.

If voice access is not enabled by default, you have to manually activate it. Here are the steps:

Step 1: First press the following keys on your keyboard to enable Voice Control in Windows 11.

• Alt + Shift + C – allow voice access to listen to your commands
• Alt + Shift + B – prevent voice access from listening to you

Step 2: Once done, now you can control your Windows 11 with voice. To do this, follow these steps;

If you want to open the Microsoft Edge browser, just press the voice control icon and then say Open Edge”. Your Windows OS will automatically capture your voice and start searching for it.

You can also switch between different apps using voice control. You can also command your Windows to minimize or maximize apps that are running in the background.

You can also command your Windows 11 PC to press by button or action like you can say, click 8 or double click 29.

Just like your Windows search, you can use voice search for search, you can also search on your browser for specific things. You can search like, search on Google for Windows 11. It will open Google and search for Windows 11 terms. You have to speak loudly and clearly.

Manage Voice Access & Microphone

Here are some useful commands to manage settings regarding voice control.

Control Apps in Windows 11

Here are commands that allow users to access apps in your Windows 11.

Perform Action	Command-to-Speak
Open new app	“Open [app name]” i.e “Open Chrome”
Close app	“Close Chrome”
Minimize or maximize an app window	“Maximize window” or “Minimize window”
Restore a window	“Restore window”
Open task switcher	“Show task switcher”
Go to desktop	“Go to desktop”
Search on the browser	“Search on [search engine]* for [x]#” e.g. “Search on Google for Windows 11”

Mouse and Keyboard Actions

Perform Action	Command-to-Speak
Select an item	“Click” or “Tap”
Left or right-click an item	“Left-click, “Right-click”
Pres a key or combination of keys	“Press [key1] [key2]” e.g. “Press Ctrl Shift Esc”
Press a key multiple times	“Press [key] [count] times” e.g. “Press Shift 5 times”
Press and hold down a key	“Press and hold [key]” e.g. “Press and hold Shift”
Release the held down key	“Release [key]” e.g. “Release Shift”
Move your mouse pointer continuously	“Move mouse [direction]” e.g. “Move mouse top-left”

There are many other commands you can use to play with your Windows 11 PC or laptop. You can find them all on the Microsoft website. If you want to know more about Windows 11 voice control then this is all you need.

Related Posts:

• Disable Blur on Sign-in Screen in Windows 11
• Convert HEIC to JPG in Windows 11
• Turn On Secure Boot for Windows 11

Conclusion

If you love talking to your laptop then you should use this feature. It is quite a helpful feature as you can easily access your apps with voice commands.