Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent

Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.

Google wants to make more people shout at their phone rather than type on it

Many people still feel embarrassed trying to use voice search on their handset in public

Aatif Sulleyman

Tuesday 15 August 2017 11:24 BST

Google is trying to get more people to dictate messages and searches, instead of typing them out.

The company says has now opened up voice typing to 119 language varieties and over a billion people around the world, and says switching from typing to talking will help users save time.

However, many phone users still feel embarrassed trying to use voice search on their phone in public.

Background noise often causes the feature to malfunction, forcing users to either shout at their phones or give up and switch back to regular typing.

11 hidden Google Chrome features you didn't know existed

Show all 11

1/1111 hidden Google Chrome features you didn't know existed

11 hidden Google Chrome features you didn't know existed

Easter Eggs

There are a lot of Easter Eggs hidden in Chrome, and more and more are discovered each year. One of our favourites is the dinosaur game. The next time you fail to connect to the internet on Chrome, tap the spacebar. It’s also worth Googling “barrel roll”, “zerg rush”, “super mario bros” (and clicking the question mark graphic), “festivus”, “recursion”, “askew” and “atari breakout” (and then clicking Images).

11 hidden Google Chrome features you didn't know existed

Pin tabs

If you tend to browse with a lot of tabs open at once, you can clear up the clutter by pinning the ones you’re least likely to close. Right-click them and select Pin Tab. They’ll automatically shrink and slide left.

11 hidden Google Chrome features you didn't know existed

Save battery

You can save some battery life by sacrificing performance. In Settings, scroll down to the System section and uncheck the box reading Continue running background apps when Google Chrome is closed. We wouldn’t recommend having this feature enabled all the time, but it could come in handy if you’re nowhere near a charger.

11 hidden Google Chrome features you didn't know existed

Browse faster

There are loads of Chrome Extensions available, but one of the most useful is Google’s Data Saver. It compresses the pages you visit to reduce data usage and speed up loading times.

11 hidden Google Chrome features you didn't know existed

Make multiple profiles

If you use multiple Google accounts, for work and for personal use, for instance, you can keep your bookmarks and browsing history for each account separate by creating individual profiles. Go to Settings, Manage People and Add Person. This is also handy for when you lend your computer to a friend, and you don’t want them to have access to your internet history.

11 hidden Google Chrome features you didn't know existed

Downloads

Many users would prefer it if Chrome downloaded files straight to the desktop, but by default it sends them to your Downloads folder. You can change this by going to Settings, opening the Show Advanced Settings menu, clicking Downloads and choosing your preferred destination.

11 hidden Google Chrome features you didn't know existed

Extra info

To see cookies and permissions for every site you visit, click the View Site Information symbol on the left-hand edge of the omnibar. It will also let you quickly control things like Popup and Location settings.

11 hidden Google Chrome features you didn't know existed

Task manager

You can quickly find out which pages are using up the most memory and slowing down your browsing experience by opening the burger menu, going down to More Tools and opening the Chrome Task Manager.

11 hidden Google Chrome features you didn't know existed

Calculator

When you’re online and need to do a quick sum, you don’t have to hunt down your computer calculator or whip out your phone. Just type it into the Chrome omnibar and hit Enter.

11 hidden Google Chrome features you didn't know existed

Startup

If there’s a certain set of pages you always open when you turn your computer on, you can get Chrome to open them automatically when you launch the browser. In Settings, click Set Pages in the On Startup section, and choose the ones you want.

11 hidden Google Chrome features you didn't know existed

Search Gmail from omnibar

You can search your gmail inbox directly from the omnibar by going to Settings, Manage Search Engines, scrolling to the bottom and pasting https://mail.google.com/mail/ca/u/0/#apps/%s into the box on the right-hand side.

In a blog post titled, “Type less, talk more”, Daan van Esch, Google’s technical program manager of speech, explained how the company used artificial intelligence to help it understand so many different languages.

“To incorporate 30 new language varieties, we worked with native speakers to collect speech samples, asking them to read common phrases,” he said.

“This process trained our machine learning models to understand the sounds and words of the new languages and to improve their accuracy when exposed to more examples over time.”

To voice type messages on your phone, download Gboard from the Play Store, pick your language, tap the microphone and start speaking.

To make Google searches using your voice, launch the Google app, open up the Settings menu and select your language.

You can now also type out emoji by speaking to your phone – by saying “winky face emoji”, for instance – but only in English and if you’re in the US.

Voice support for all 119 supported languages isn’t yet available across all of Google’s biggest products, such as Translate, but it will come to them in the future.

The full list of newly supported languages and locales follows:

Amharic (Ethiopia)
Armenian (Armenia)
Azerbaijani (Azerbaijani)
Bengali (Bangladesh, India)
English (Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania)
Georgian (Georgia)
Gujarati (India)
Javanese (Indonesia)
Kannada (India)
Khmer (Cambodian)
Lao (Laos)
Latvian (Latvia)
Malayalam (India)
Marathi (India)
Nepali (Nepal)
Sinhala (Sri Lanka)
Sundanese (Indonesia)
Swahili (Tanzania, Kenya)
Tamil (India, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Malaysia)
Telugu (India)
Urdu (Pakistan, India)

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies