Voice on Android

On Android you can speak your messages and hear Sarah’s replies. Here’s exactly what voice can and can’t do on Android today.

What Android can do

• Dictation: tap the microphone and speak; your words appear in the box for you to check and send (unless you turn on hands-free mode, below). Your phone’s own speech recognition (usually Google’s) turns your speech into text; Kinto receives only the words, not the recording.
• Spoken replies: Sarah reads her replies aloud in her own voice. If her voice isn’t available for a moment, your phone’s built-in voice reads them instead.
• Play again: tap the play button under any reply to hear it again.

Not on Android yet

If you ask Sarah to call you on Android, she can’t yet. You can still chat with her any time, by typing or speaking your messages.

Hands-free mode

The button with two circling arrows in the message box turns on hands-free mode. It’s off when you start. With it on, Kinto works more like a conversation:

• after you tap the microphone and speak, your message sends itself once you’ve been quiet for about 3 seconds. A red ring around the microphone counts down;
• after Sarah finishes speaking her reply, the microphone switches on again to listen for your answer.

If the microphone doesn’t work

1. Open Kinto’s Settings from the menu, and under Privacy & permissions tap Open Android settings.
2. Tap Permissions, then Microphone, and choose Allow only while using the app.
3. Come back to Kinto and tap the microphone again.

A quiet room helps. If dictation still doesn’t work, you can always type.