Responding to speech interactions (XAML)

Incorporate speech into your apps using Cortana voice commands, speech recognition, and speech synthesis.

Tip The info in this topic is specific to developing Windows Store apps using C++, C#, or Visual Basic. See Responding to speech interactions (HTML) for Windows Store apps using JavaScript.

*Cortana voice commands: *

Extend the basic functionality of Cortana with voice commands that launch and execute a single action in an external application.

An app can be launched in the foreground (the app takes focus) or background (Cortana retains focus but provides results from the app), depending on the level and complexity of the interaction. For instance, voice commands that require additional context or user input are best handled in the foreground, while basic commands can be handled in the background.

For more info, see Cortana interactions.

Speech recognition:

Provide input, dictate text, or accomplish tasks through verbal commands from within your app using speech recognition to convert spoken words into text.

The feature includes support for pre-defined grammars for free-text dictation and web search, and support for custom grammars authored using Speech Recognition Grammar Specification (SRGS) Version 1.0.

See Quickstart: Speech recognition and Windows.Media.SpeechRecognition.

Text-to-speech (TTS):

Convert text into spoken words from your app using TTS, or speech synthesis.

TTS enables your app to read aloud a basic text string, or a more complex one declared in Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML), which provides a standard way to control characteristics of speech output such as pronunciation, volume, pitch, rate or speed, and emphasis.

See Windows.Media.SpeechSynthesis.

In this section

Topic	Description
Quickstart: Speech recognition	Use speech recognition to provide input, specify an action or command, and accomplish tasks in your Universal Windows app.
How to specify the speech recognizer language	Learn how to select an installed language to use for speech recognition.
How to define custom recognition constraints	Learn how to define and use custom constraints for speech recognition.
How to enable continuous dictation	Learn how to capture and recognize long-form, continuous dictation speech input.
How to manage issues with audio input	Learn how to manage issues with speech-recognition accuracy caused by audio-input quality.
How to set speech recognition timeouts	Set how long a speech recognizer ignores silence or unrecognizable sounds (babble) and continues listening for speech input.