In this article, we will talk about a Hidden Feature from Beta, that is Now Available in Windows 11 25267, which is some new Voice Access Improvements.
Microsoft is continuing to improve Voice Access by adding new Commands and easing up the process of using Voice Commands. In this article, I will show you how to enable some new improvements in the Dev Channel.
You will need to download ViveTool, which is a small app that will help us enable hidden features from Windows.
After you download ViveTool, you will need to extract the contents of the archive into the System32 location so that we can have full administrative privileges to the operating system.
Right-click on the archive and then click on Extract all. Select the System32 location and then click on Extract. You will also need to provide some administrative privileges.
After you’ve done that, you will need to open CMD as administrator and then copy and paste the following command:
vivetool /enable /id:38833134
You will now need to restart your computer, for the changes to take effect.
After the restart, the new Voice Access Improvements listed below, will be available.
Voice Access Improvements
Voice access is now more flexible and supports interaction with UI controls having different names such as:
- Names which contain numbers in them, for example the Calculator app where you can now directly say “Click 5”.
- Names without any whitespaces between them, for example in Excel, under the Insert tab, you can interact with UI controls like “PivotTable” and “PivotChart” directly by saying “click pivot table” or “click pivot chart”.
- Names with special characters in them, for example items like “Bluetooth & devices” or “Dial – up”. You can now say “click Bluetooth and devices” or “click dial hyphen up” and interact with these UI controls.
We have improved the horizontal scroll experience where we now support scrolling to the extreme left and right ends of a page, and you can do a continuous scroll left/right similar to what is already present in vertical scroll experience.
We have also added support for UI controls such as spin controls, thumb control and split buttons which enables you to interact with these controls with “click” command or by using number overlays. Commands that move the cursor in a text box now execute instantly and issues with snapping commands that snap a window left or right are fixed.
In addition, we have added support for the following commands:
| To do this | Say this |
| Close the voice access application | “Close voice access”, “Exit voice access”, “Quit voice access” |
| Open a new application | “Show [application name]” , e.g., “Show Edge” |
| Close an application | “Exit/Quit [application name]”, e.g., “Exit Word”, “Quit Edge” |
| Show grid overlay on your screen | “Show window grid” |
| Pull up the command help list | “Show command list”, “Show commands” |
| Release a held down key | “Release” |
| Move cursor in a text box | “Move forward 5 characters”, “Go back 2 lines”, “Go to start of document”, “Move to beginning of line” |
| Select the desired no. of characters/lines | “Select forward/backward [count] characters/lines”, e.g., “Select forward 5 characters” |
| Delete selected text or last dictated text | “Strike that” |
| Paste text in a text box | “Paste here”, “paste that” |
| Apply bold formatting to specific text | “Boldface [text]”, e.g., “boldface hello world” |
| Capitalize selected text or last dictated text | “Cap that” |
For more information about these improvements, you can check this article from the Microsoft Blog.
For a more in-depth tutorial, you can watch the video below from the youtube channel.
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