Voice Commands

With voice search, you can play episodes by speaking a specific phrase like "Play latest in news". Voice search is currently supported from the main screen of BeyondPod's WEAR application. When you say the search phrase BeyondPod will try to match it against any available categories, feeds and episodes. If it finds a match it will automatically start playback of the matching episodes.

Voice Search currently uses the following logic when looking for matches:

  • It will first search for a category matching the keyword and play all local episodes in that category sorted using the "Global Episode Sort Order" (General Settings > Sort Local Episodes By).
  • If it can’t find a matching category, it will try to find the first feed whose name matches the keyword and play all local episodes in the feed sorted using sort order set for that feed.
  • If it can’t find a matching feed it will try to find episodes whose name (or show notes) matches the keyword and play them sorted using the "Global Episode Sort Order".

There is a way to optionally limit the search to only a category, feed or episode scope by providing the "scope" as first part of the keyword (for example “category news”, or “feed news” or “episode science”).

There is also a way to optionally specify a specific sort order of episodes. You can use something like: “oldest in news”, or “latest in science Friday” (supported "sort" phrases are: “oldest in”, “latest in” or “random in”)

Here are some examples

  • Play News - BeyondPod will play any category, feed or episode matching the keyword "news" (according to the logic above)
  • Play feed Science Times - will play episodes for feed named "Science Times" (will not look for category or episodes)
  • Play Episode stem cells - will play episodes that have the words "stem cells" in their title or show notes
  • Play smart play - will start the default Smart Play
  • Play random in Music - will try to find category or feed (normal or virtual) named "Music", randomize the episodes and start a playback of the first one.
  • Play oldest in Science - will try to find a category or feed matching "Science" and play the episodes starting from the oldest.