Voice input for Search

[vesta0]

Feature Goal

• Provide users with a clear visible option to voice search
• Learn about whether our users would like us to invest more in Voice features

User Story

As a user, I want to be able to do a quick voice search, so I can search faster.

Acceptance Criteria

• I can initiate a voice search from the search bar
• I can turn this option off when I go to the Accessibility menu in settings
• The first time user taps on the mic icon, they should see a permission prompt and agree to voice search
• Telemetry Ticket [Telemetry] Voice Search #10465

Note: This is already possible today, user can tap on the Android microphone icon on their keyboard and voice search, but since this request comes up a lot by users, we can only assume that it's possibly hidden on some phones and/or users are used to seeing it in the search bar.

Fenix:
UNITO-UNDERSCORE!20200507-171812!

Fennec:
UNITO-UNDERSCORE!20200507-171805~2!

┆Issue is synchronized with this Jira Task

[lime124]

Hey @vesta0 What is the specific question to UX? as I understand it, we're going to be using all native stuff so there isn't anything for us to provide.

[vesta0]

Confirmed with the team that this already works with the native android voice search. We won't build anything extra for MVP.

[FruityWelsh]

Is there overlap between the voicefill project and this issue?

[NotWoods]

We could potentially use Mozilla SpeakToMe for voice search. This service is used for Voice Fill and WebThings Gateway. (I think it can be configured to use Common Voice as a dataset?)

SpeakToMe has a JS API that calls the server we can use as a template to figure out how to structure REST calls.

[sblatz]

I think this would not be a ton of engineering effort for us since we're already using this for the search widget :)

[liuche]

Some other concerns:

• Will users expect to be notified about using Google voice search, rather than their default search engine?

[sblatz]

The only thing missing from what we discussed is the toggle in the accessibility settings.

I added it to the search settings screen.
@brampitoyo is this an okay place for this preference to live? I figured since it's directly related to search it makes sense here, but please chime in with your thoughts!

[yoasif]

@sblatz I think it is fine either way - I just wanted it available. Thanks for clarifying!

[AndiAJ]

Hi, I've just checked this matter on the latest Nightly Build 200522 from 5/22 using the following devices:
• Google Pixel 3a (Android 10)
• Huawei Mate 20 Lite (Android 9)
• OnePlus A3 (Android 6.0.1

✔️ I can initiate a voice search from the search bar and widget
✔️ I can turn this option off when I go to the Accessibility menu in settings
❓ The first time user taps on the mic icon, they should see a permission prompt - You have to disable the microphone permission for Google and only afterwards the prompt gets displayed

► Video

@sblatz - Not sure about the prompt behavior, could you please review and advise?
Everything else works properly, great job! ☺️

I'll remove the QA needed label until further notice.

[sblatz]

I believe the prompt is working as expected here. It should have the same behavior as our search widget in this regard, so I will close this :)