Adding speech recognition to your app

Android 2.2 (API 8) introduced speech recognition in Android, and it continues to improve with almost every new major Android release. This recipe will demonstrate how to add speech recognition to your app using the Google Speech service.

Getting ready

Create a new project in Android Studio and call it SpeechRecognition. Use the default Phone & Tablet option and select Empty Activity when prompted for Activity Type.

How to do it...

We'll start by adding a Speak Now (or microphone) button to the layout, then we'll add the necessary code to call the speech recognizer. Open activity_main.xml and follow these steps:

1. Replace the existing TextView with the following XML:

   <TextView
       android:id="@+id/textView"
       android:layout_width="wrap_content"
       android:layout_height="wrap_content"
       android:layout_alignParentTop="true"
       android:layout_alignParentLeft="true"
       android:layout_alignParentStart...