Android TalkBack: On and Off

Hi, my name is Ricky Enger. And, today, we're gonna check out a couple of quick ways that we can turn TalkBack on and off. We're using a Google Pixel phone for our workshop here, but what we're learning should be pretty much the same for other Android phones as well. If things don't work the way you expect, or if you get stuck and you just need to talk things through, Hadley's here to do that with you. So if you scroll down the workshop page, you'll find some cool resources. Plus, there's info on how you can contact us if you need to.

Okay, so before we figure out how to turn TalkBack on and off, it's helpful to know what TalkBack actually is, right? TalkBack is a screen reader built right into our Android phones. Meaning that when we turn it on, it's gonna speak all the information on the screen. So yeah, apps, phone calls, texting, web browsing, all that stuff is gonna be spoken aloud so there's no need to see the screen. Sounds awesome, right? So how do we turn it on?

Well, there are a couple of different ways to do this. The first way is just to ask our Google assistant. Yeah, so it's not just good for telling us the weather, or setting a timer, although it can do that too. Now, every phone is just a little different, so we'll try this, and if it doesn't work right away, that's totally fine. We've got another way to do it. So since we wanna turn TalkBack on, we'll just say, "Hey, Google." That's gonna get our assistant's attention. And now, we'll just say, "Turn TalkBack on"

Google Assistant: Turning TalkBack on. Double tap to activate.

Ricky: Nice. TalkBack is now on and we'll be able to hear what's available on our screen. There may be a tutorial on how to use TalkBack if this is the first time it's been run, or we may find our Google assistant on the screen showing the little conversation we just had. And, hey, we'll get into how to explore our screen really soon. In fact, we'll do that in our TalkBack basics workshop, which is the next in this series. For now, though, TalkBack is on and that's a beautiful thing. But, you know, sometimes we may need to share our phone with somebody who doesn't use TalkBack. So how can we quickly turn it off? Well, luckily it's pretty much just like turning it on. We'll just ask our assistant to take care of it. So, we'll say, "Hey, Google, turn TalkBack off."

Google Assistant: Turning TalkBack off.

Ricky: We may get some spoken feedback when that happens and we may hear a little chime. And TalkBack is now off. Cool. So if our Google assistant isn't set up, or just isn't doing what we ask it to for some reason, or if we're in an environment where talking to the phone isn't the best idea, there's another quick way to turn TalkBack on and off. For this, we'll use the volume buttons on our device. These might be two little buttons right next to each other, or it may feel like one big, long button. So, now, we're gonna press and hold both these buttons at the same time. If it feels like there's one long button on the device, we'll just press on the top part of the button and the bottom part at the same time. So we'll just press these in together and hold for one, two, three.

Google Assistant: TalkBack on, Pixel launcher, home.

Ricky: Woohoo, there we go. Now, if this is the first time we've opened TalkBack, you may hear a message telling you that accessibility is enabled and to keep holding the volume buttons in for three seconds to turn it on. If that happens, just keep holding those buttons in until you hear, "TalkBack on." Okay, great. So TalkBack is now on. If we need to turn it off again, we'll just do the exact same thing we did to turn it on. So we'll hold our volume up and down buttons in for one, two, three.

Google Assistant: TalkBack off.

Ricky: And there we go. TalkBack is off. That's exactly what we hoped for, except that, for me, anyway, this phone is now just a big, quiet piece of glass. It's all good though, because with one of these two shortcuts we just learned, TalkBack will be up and running again in no time. I'm Ricky Enger, and I'm glad you could spend a little time with me today turning TalkBack on and off. See you next time.