How to Enable Voice Commands on Your PS5
Voice commands and assistants are all the rage these days, and every major tech platform is trying to expand their own voice assistant. Sure enough, PlayStation introduced its own voice command feature.
The PS5’s voice command feature isn’t finalized yet, but a preview version has been released for members of the PS5 software beta program. So this is how you can use voice commands on your PS5.
What is voice command in PS5?
Since PS5 isn’t natively compatible with third-party voice assistants like Google Assistant or Alexa, it was high time that PlayStation either added support for them or developed its own voice assistant. Turns out PlayStation went for the latter.
Like the Google Assistant on Xbox Series X|S, the PlayStation 5’s voice command feature lets you speak to your console to perform simple commands like opening a game or controlling the media you’re watching.
PS5 voice control is still in preview. That means you’ll need to join the PS5 software beta program to access this feature as it’s not publicly available yet. PS5 Voice Control currently only understands and speaks British and American English.
With voice control enabled, you can simply speak into your headset or the DualSense controller’s microphone to get things done on your PS5 without touching a button.
How to enable and use voice control in PS5
You can enable voice control for your PS5 from the settings page. You can also activate the Hello PlayStation! Feature to automatically activate voice commands whenever you say Hello PlayStation!
- Start your PS5 and go to settings Side.
- Scroll down and select Voice command (preview).
- Switch Activate voice command.
Once you’ve enabled voice control in PS5, you’ll be presented with a welcome screen explaining the feature. Choose Enable to finalize your decision. You will see a short guide on how to use voice control in PS5. Choose I have it, and you’re done!
By default, once you enable the voice command feature, PlayStation will also enable the Hey Playstation! function for you. This feature puts your headset or controller mic on standby so that it wakes up when you say something Hey PlayStation!
You can also change the speaking rate and volume for voice command output in Settings. The voice command will turn off after four seconds of inactivity, but you can change this to your preferred duration in settings.
With these features enabled, you can just go ahead and say something like Hey PlayStation! Open Apex Legends. Once Voice Command registers your voice, it will do what you tell it to do.
However, your PS5 must be turned on and signed in to PlayStation Network for your voice commands to work.
All PS5 voice commands
Since the voice commands feature is still a preview, there aren’t that many commands available for it yet. To use the PS5’s voice command, all you have to do is say Hello PlayStation! and then say one of the following commands.
| function | command |
|---|---|
| Find an app or game on PlayStation Store or in your library. | Find [Name] |
| Opens a game or app on your PlayStation. | Open [Name] |
| Stop the media. | Break |
| Resumes the media. | Continue |
| Rewinds the media. | Rewind |
| Fast forward media. | Fast forward |
| Jumps to the next medium. | Next |
| Returns to the previous media. | previous |
| Exits voice control. | Cancel |
Switch your console to singing
PS5 Voice Control saves you time by allowing you to create a shortcut to the game you want on PlayStation Store or your console. You can also control the show you’re watching on Netflix just by asking your PS5 to pause or resume it. You no longer have to reach for the controller.
The PS5 voice command is still in preview, so the commands attached are rather limited. However, rest assured that PlayStation won’t let such a feature rest and will add more commands as Sony develops it further.