Talk Back supports custom actions, which is a definite advantage for
Talk Back. You have the context menus in Talk Back, so you can get to
more features and options that way. You can interact with the developers
on the Eyes-Free list and participate in the Talk Back betas, which is
another point in Talk Back's favor. Some people will say that Talk Back
is more responsive, is updated more frequently and is part of pure
Android so it was the way Google meant for you to interact with your
phone. I haven't noticed that it's more responsive than Voice Assistant,
and I can't tell how often Voice Assistant is updated, so I don't know
if Talk Back is more up to date or not. I don't have a problem using
software from companies other than Google, so the fact that Samsung made
some changes to Talk Back's source code isn't an issue for me.
Voice Assistant uses some different gestures, so people that don't like
the angle gestures in Talk Back may prefer Voice Assistant. You don't
have the context menus in Voice Assistant, and it supports more than two
finger gestures, so you get more shortcuts to change things like screen
dimming, voice rate, ..., or check the status of things like the time,
battery charge and so on.
Right now I'm using Voice Assistant, but in general I prefer Talk Back a
bit, mostly because of the custom actions support. I'd suggest you try
each of them and decide for yourself which you prefer.
I'm not sure about the notifications, but this is how notifications work
on my S7, so there has to be a setting to accomplish this. Maybe someone
else will know which settings to tweak to accomplish this or maybe
you'll stumble across it yourself. Sorry, but I've looked around, and I
just can't remember what I might have done to set this behavior.
You can configure the triple click of the home button to toggle any
accessibility service, including Talk Back. You can also have it present
a dialog of services to start. If you want it to just toggle Talk Back
on and off then go into Settings -> Accessibility -> Direct Access and
make sure Talk Back is the only service that's toggled on.
On 12/01/17 13:52, Matthew Chao wrote:
Hi, Folks. Can someone on this list tell me the advantages and
disadvantages of TalkBack and VoiceAssistant? I'm using a Galaxy S7.
Also, how do I get the Notifications to give me an audible, but not
bring up the screen. This is very distracting.
Finally, is there a quick way to turn TalkBack off and on so I can have
a sighted person be able to use this phone? VoiceAssistant has the
Apple-like tripple-click which I like, but saw nothing like that with
TalkBack. Thanks in advance for your info.
Matthew Chao
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