How to Use Voice Commands on Your TV (2022): Alexa, Google Assistant, Siri and Roku TV Voice Commands
Although widely available and major improvements in speech recognition, most people rarely use voice assistants. And when we talk to Alexa, Google Assistant or Siri, it’s usually just to ask about the weather. However, there are a few voice commands you can use today to enhance your TV viewing experience, because, let’s face it, navigating with the TV remote is a pain.
Imagine you’re halfway through an episode Andor or your current favorite TV show, and the doorbell rang. You can use voice commands to pause the action or rewind where you left off when you go back. You can also use voice commands to launch streaming apps, check who directed the show, or even find out what the actor on screen just said.
Gear Readers Special Offer: Get One 1 year WIRED subscription for $5 ($25 off). This includes unlimited access to WIRED.com and our print magazine (if you wish). Sign up to help fund the work we do every day.
What you need
All The best TV and television equipment there are several forms of voice control built in. The most versatile are Google Assistant, Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, and Roku voice commands, but the others offer at least some of the same functionality. If your remote has a button with a microphone icon, it supports voice commands.
Sometimes you can also use a smartphone, smart speakeror smart screen to control your TV, as long as it is in the same room and connected to the same Wi-Fi network. This is useful if you don’t want to reach for the remote and press that microphone button before giving a command.
There’s usually some setup required for all of this to work, such as adding your smart TV to the Google or Apple Home app, the Samsung SmartThings app, or installing the Roku app. With Amazon’s Alexa, you can pair your smart speaker with your Fire TV by opening the Alexa app, tapping Than > Television & Video, select your Fire TV and select the Echo speaker you want to use to control the TV. You may also need to link your streaming service accounts, but that’s usually part of the setup process for streaming devices like Chromecast with Google TV.
Basic things
Simple voice commands will work with any service, including things like:
- Play
- Pause
- Summary
- Stop
- Restart
- Turn down the volume
- Volume up
Choose what to watch
Because it’s difficult to type anything with the remote, voice commands are great for launching specific apps, shows, and movies, or finding content you might like. Here are a few commands to try:
- Launch Netflix
- Open Hulu
- Show me a movie with Sam Rockwell
- Play Strange things on Netflix
- Show me a sci-fi TV show
- Find action movies in 4K
- Find all movies by Martin Scorcese
With Google Assistant, you don’t even need to know the name of the movie, you can say things like “Stallone, boxing movie” and stone will pop up or “funny vampire movies” to receive What do we do in the dark.
Go back and forward
It can be difficult to fast forward or rewind with precision with the remote, but you can be precise with voice commands. Try these:
- Rewind 10 minutes
- Fast forward 30 seconds
- Go back 10 seconds
- Fast forward three minutes
- Play next episode
