iPhone/iPod Touch Voice Commands

Speech commands are one of the great new features of the iPhone 3GS. It’s an accessibility feature that will help blind and mobility impaired users, and will also have significant benefit for people driving or doing other things while using their iPhone.

Updated for iOS 4! There are only a few small differences between the iPhone OS 3.2 commands and the new iOS 4 or iPhone 4 commands. These differences are highlighted with this “New!” icon.

iPhone 4 Voice Control Screen

Here are all the speech commands I’ve seen people list for the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4. The asterisks after some commands link to the place on the internet I saw the command reported. If you’re looking for something that you can print out as a memory aid, try the iPhone and iPod Touch Voice Commands Cheat Sheet page.

Starting Voice Control

Hold down the phone’s home button or the middle button on your headset until the voice control feature comes up on screen and you hear a beep. This should take about 2 seconds.

Phone Commands

Obviously, these only work on the iPhone and not the iPod Touch.

Call a contact

“Call” or “dial” plus the person’s name or nickname as entered into your address book. Optionally add the phone number type at the end, such as “home”, “work”, “mobile”. For example, “Dial John Smith Work” or “Call Mum”.

Call a number

“Call” or “Dial” plus the number, just as you would recite it usually. For example, “Dial 555 9592″.

Make a correction

Say “not that one”, “wrong”, “nope”, “no”, or “not that”.

Music Commands

These are the same for iPhone and iPod Touch.

Start music

Say “play” or “play music”.

Play from a specific playlist

Say “play playlist” and the name of the playlist. For example, “Play playlist gym songs”.

Play from a specific album

Say “play album” plus the name of the album. For example “Play album Dark Side Of The Moon”.

Play from a specific artist

Say “play artist” plus the name of the artist. For example, “Play artist Pink Floyd”. The alternate “Play songs by” plus the name of the artist has also been reported to work*.

Pause music

Say “pause” or “pause music”.

Skip to next song

Say “next song”. The shorter “next” has also been reported to work.*.

Go back to previous song

Say “previous song”.

Shuffle the current playlist

Just say “shuffle”.

Turn on Genius feature

Say “Genius”, “play more like this”, or “play more songs like this”.

Get information about the current track

Say “what’s playing”, or for more specific information say “what song is this”, “who sings this song”, or “who is this song by”.

Misc Commands

These are the same for iPhone and iPod Touch.

Ask the time

Say “what is the time” or “what time is it”.

Cancel voice control

Simply say “cancel”. With iOS 4 you can also say “stop”.

Get help

Say “help”.