Two Ways To Take a Photo On Your iPhone Using Your Voice

You can make the Camera app on your iPhone take a picture using only your voice by either setting up a Shortcut or activating Voice Control.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today I'm going to show you two different ways to take a photo with your iPhone using just your voice.
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So often I'm asked if there's a way that you can take a photo using your iPhone and just your voice. In other words you put your iPhone down or set it up on a tripod and you just issue a voice command and it snaps a photo. Well, there are two different ways to do this. First I'm going to show you how to do it using Shortcuts. Then I'm going to show you how to do it using Voice Control. 
For the Shortcuts method you want to install the Shortcuts app, if you don't already have it. You can get it in the App Store. It's from Apple. We're going to create a new shortcut. We're going to use Add Action and then we're going to Search for Camera and then use Take Photo. Now this will be set for Take 1 Photo with the Back Camera which is exactly what we want. But we need to click Show More here and turn off Show Camera Preview. In other words it's just going to take the photo. It's not going to ask us first. Now we need to use the Plus button here and we need to search for something else. This time we're going to look for Photos and go to the Photos app, Shortcuts, and then we'll use Save to Photo Album. We'll set it to Save Photo to Recents. Now this is all we should need. BUT we're not finished. Let's go and Name this. So we're going to name it something that we're going to want to use with  a voice command. So let's do something like Snap-It. Now we'll check to make sure it's allowed to access the camera and Photos and Done. Now if we were to use this here, by just running it, it should work. 
Let me try to take a picture of my keyboard. You could see it works and it added that to the Library. So how about doing this with a voice command. Well, it's kind of tricky. Let's go to Done here. So now we're at the top level of the Shortcuts app. Now let's launch Siri but you could also say the words, Hey and then Siri, to activate this. Snap-It. (Watching) So you could see it ran there in the Shortcuts app. So it all seems pretty good and actually this will work. All you need to do is go to the Shortcuts app. Put your phone down wherever you want and then you could use the voice command to activate the shortcut, as long as the Shortcuts app is running. But what if I go to the Home screen and try. Snap-It. Now you get this message. Now I've heard that some people don't get this message. Sometimes it works. But on my iPhone and my iPad I get this message here. So I have to be in the Shortcuts app for this to work. However, you could fix that.
Let's go back into the shortcut and add one more thing. We're going to search for Continue and then use Continue in Shortcuts app. Now I'm actually going to grab that and move it to the top. So this shortcut will first switch to the Shortcuts app and then run everything else. But it still won't necessarily work. What really helps is if you add a short wait. So we'll add, again here, search for Wait. Use Wait here and wait for one second. Put that in-between. Now it will give it time to actually get to the Shortcuts app to run. So, let's try it. Snap-It. (Watching.) Now it actually works. You may want to make it wait more than one second. Give it a 3 second delay so you have time to kind of pose after you speak the word. Now this should also work with Hey and then Siri. Let's give that a try. Hey Siri Snap-It. (Watching.) You could see there it works! So you have an option there. You could create a simple shortcut and then make sure you launch the Shortcuts app before you try to activate it. Or you can add those two additional actions at the top of the shortcut and then be able to activate either from the Home screen or other apps. 
One word of advice though. Don't use Snap-It as the name for the shortcut. A lot of times Siri thinks that's just one word and doesn't activate it. Use something longer like Take a Picture or Everybody Say Cheese. 
Now let's look at doing the same thing but without Shortcuts at all. Using Voice Control instead. So, to get to Voice Control go to Settings and then look for Accessibility. In Accessibility you'll find Voice Control. Before you turn it on checkout the Setting for Overlay. Now you probably have this set to None. If you do Item Numbers then you should be able to activate items on the screen using the number that's shown. If you do Item Names you should be able to use the name there. Now it's kind of tricky because I find Item Names to be pretty inconsistent. Let's stick with the Names now and see what we get. You're going to see what I mean. Now we want to activate Voice Control but we don't want to do it here because then you have to go back into Settings to turn it off. Instead go to the top level of Accessibility and down here at the bottom is the Accessibility shortcut. In addition to whatever else you have checked,  make sure Voice Control is checked and you could see this is - Triple Click the Side Button for. So now we can go back Home, triple click the side button and turn Voice Control on. Now I could just tap Voice Control and Voice Control is on. You'll see labels appear under everything. 
So let's give this a try. Open Camera. Now you see instead of the item names, unfortunately we just have the word Button at the bottom. I'm not sure why that is but it still works. We just have to do an extra step. So I could say Tap Button. Tap 2. You could see there it works. Now I find sometimes it actually will show the name Button and then you have to tell it you want to tap 2. Other times it will actually label that button and take a picture. Then you could just say Tap and Take Picture and it will work with only one step instead of 2.
Now as you probably know another way to take a photo while you're in the Camera app is to press the Volume Down button. Well, you can do that with Voice Control and it will work to take a picture. So all you've got to do is say Turn Volume Down. You could see it works to take a photo rather than turn the volume down because you're in the Camera app. 
Now there at least two other ways to take a photo with your iPhone without touching it.  One is to use your Apple Watch if you have one. There's a Camera Remote app on the Apple Watch. It will actually show you what the camera on your iPhone sees and then you could tap the button to take a photo. Another method is to use a simple Bluetooth device. A lot of times they sell these with Selfie Sticks. So you could get like a cheap Selfie Stick and it comes with this little Bluetooth device that's just a single button. You can connect that to your phone and all it basically does is allow you to snap a photo. So then you've launched the Camera app. You set your iPhone up somewhere and then you stand there and hide this little button in your hand and snap a photo. So those are both possibilities as well. Hope you found this useful. 
Thanks for watching.

Comments: 7 Responses to “Two Ways To Take a Photo On Your iPhone Using Your Voice”

Kika Wai'Alae

4 years ago

good stuff! but how do I turn off the screen from blinking?

Gary Rosenzweig

Kika: Do you mean when the screen turns white to simulate a flash and create more light? Is you Flash function in the Camera app on?

Fred

Can you use voice command to start and stop a video with iPhone?

Fred: Try it and see. I don't see why you couldn't do that with the Voice Control method.

Tom Davis

Gary I have the shortcut working but there is no photo in my recents folder. I have been over the steps in the shortcut several times but nothing change, i.e. no photo. I can hear the camera shutter taking the photo and the shortcut cycles.When I shift to the Photos app it says it has "Updated Just Now" and no matter where I look in the Recents photos album there are no new photos. iPhone 11 Pro running iOS 14.4.2 Plan to demo this at a Tidewater Area Macintosh Users Group meeting this Thursday.

Tom: Sorry, not sure what could be wrong. Does it work when you just run it in Shortcuts? Keep experimenting.

Gary, finally got it to work. The secret was deleting the save to Photos step and recreating it. I also have done a restart on my iPhone.

Comments Closed.

Two Ways To Take a Photo On Your iPhone Using Your Voice

Comments: 7 Responses to “Two Ways To Take a Photo On Your iPhone Using Your Voice”

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