Lewis Lebentz

How to create your own 'OK Google' commands

Voice control is becoming very popular on mobile devices, you will hear people saying 'OK Google' to their watch or phone, and 'Hey Siri' to their iPhone wherever you go. However, the current commands available on iOS and Android are quite limited, until now.

Using Tasker and Commandr you can now create you own commands, with limitless possibilities! Root isn't even necessary.

Tasker and Commandr from the Play Store.

Once you have those two apps, open up Commandr and you will be presented with a welcome screen, guiding you through the installation. Follow the steps until you get to the main menu screen, as below.

Make sure you grant Commandr access to observe Google Now actions, or this will not work.

There are many built-in commands, which may be enough to suit your needs, however the power users will be drawn to the 'Tasker Commands' option, here you will see all tasks you have created from within the Tasker app.

Here are a few popular uses of this:

• Car Mode - Setting your phone to read messages, and open apps like Google Maps or Waze, and starting audio
• Music Control - You can tell your phone to skip tracks, change the volume and more
• Toggle Connections - For some reason Google won't let you turn on/off Wi-Fi and other settings via Google Now

You can customise the voice command too, for this example I just created a simple Tasker task to tell me my battery percentage.

There is one extra feature that is only available to rooted users though, if you have an Android Wear smartwatch, like the Moto 360, these commands will not work on the watch unless you download the Xposed Framework and install the Commandr module.

Tasker has many features beyond this, some of which I will provide guides for in future posts. Including how to turn on Wi-Fi when you get home; and off when you leave. And my favourite, disable the lock screen when it detects your Android Wear watch!

Please let me know how you have used Tasker!