Visualize a world where you can control everything around you just by speaking—whether it’s your wearable, car, or even your home. This isn’t the distant future; it’s happening now. In fact, the number of smart speakers shipped globally is projected to reach over 270 million units by 2028 . This surge reflects a growing love for voice-controlled devices in our daily lives.
For businesses, this means one thing: it’s time to integrate voice technology into your apps to stay ahead of the curve. React Speech Recognition makes this easier than ever. By harnessing the Web Speech API and customizable commands, you can create web apps that listen, understand, and respond to users seamlessly.
Know more about what React Speech Recognition is and get comprehensive guidance on implementing it in your applications. Let’s turn the ideas from this blog into a plan and empower your business to harness the power of voice technology now!
React Speech Recognition is a highly functional library designed to integrate voice recognition capabilities into React applications.
Employing the Web Speech API provides a seamless way to capture speech from the user’s microphone and convert it into text. React Speech Recognition is particularly useful for creating interactive and accessible applications that respond to voice commands or enable dictation.
React Speech Recognition operates by utilizing the Web Speech API to transform spoken language from a user’s microphone into text, making it accessible to your React components. The ‘ useSpeechRecognition ’ hook is central to this process, managing the global state of the Web Speech API and offering methods to control the microphone.
Following is a comprehensive understanding of the technology behind React Speech Recognition and see how it works seamlessly within the React ecosystem:
The core technology powering React Speech Recognition is the Web Speech API. This API, supported natively by browsers like Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge, provides interfaces for speech recognition and synthesis. The API captures audio input from the user’s microphone and processes it to generate a text transcript. However, native support varies, and for broader compatibility, integrating polyfills can extend functionality to more browsers.
React Speech Recognition utilizes hooks, specifically ‘ useSpeechRecognition ,’ to manage the speech recognition process. This hook handles starting and stopping the microphone, capturing the transcript, and managing the state of the recognition process. For example, by importing this hook, developers can start listening with ‘ SpeechRecognition.startListening() ’ and stop it with ‘ SpeechRecognition.stopListening() .’ The hook also provides a transcript state that updates in real-time as the user speaks.
React Speech Recognition allows the creation of specific commands that trigger predefined actions. For instance, you can set commands to navigate to a webpage, perform API calls, or alter the user interface based on recognized speech phrases.
Given the varying native support for the Web Speech API across browsers, React Speech Recognition can be combined with polyfills to ensure consistent functionality. Polyfills can be integrated to provide a uniform experience across different environments, making voice features accessible to a wider audience.
The library includes mechanisms for detecting browser support and handling cases where the Web Speech API is not available. It can render fallback content or provide alternative functionalities to ensure a graceful degradation of features.
To begin, you need to install the ‘ react-speech-recognition ’ package. This package provides the essential hooks and functions to manage speech recognition in your React components.
npm install –save react-speech-recognition
Once installed, import the necessary components into your React application:
Javascript
import SpeechRecognition, { useSpeechRecognition } from ‘react-speech-recognition’;
Create a basic component to test the speech recognition functionality. The ‘ useSpeechRecognition ’ hook provides the essential state and functions such as ‘ transcript ,’ ‘ listening ,’ ‘resetTranscript ,’ and ‘ browserSupportsSpeechRecognition .’
Javascript
import React from ‘react’;
import SpeechRecognition, { useSpeechRecognition } from ‘react-speech-recognition’;
const VoiceAssistant = () => {
const { transcript, listening, resetTranscript, browserSupportsSpeechRecognition } = useSpeechRecognition();
if (!browserSupportsSpeechRecognition) {
return <span>Browser doesn’t support speech recognition.</span>;
}
return (
<div>
<p>Microphone: {listening ? ‘on’ : ‘off’}</p>
<button onClick={SpeechRecognition.startListening}>Start</button>
<button onClick={SpeechRecognition.stopListening}>Stop</button>
<button onClick={resetTranscript}>Reset</button>
<p>{transcript}</p>
</div>
);
};
export default VoiceAssistant;
To make your application more interactive, you can add voice commands. Define an array of command objects with the phrases to listen for and their corresponding callback functions.
Javascript
const commands = [
{
command: ‘open *’,
callback: (website) => window.open(`http://${website.split(‘ ‘).join(”)}`)
},
{
command: ‘change background color to *’,
callback: (color) => document.body.style.backgroundColor = color
}
];
const { transcript } = useSpeechRecognition({ commands });
This setup enables your application to respond to specific voice commands, enhancing its interactivity and usability.
For applications that require continuous voice input, set the continuous property to true. This keeps the microphone active until explicitly stopped.
Javascript
SpeechRecognition.startListening({ continuous: true });
*Note that continuous listening may have varying support across different browsers. Using polyfills can help ensure consistent functionality.
Handling Browser Compatibility
React Speech Recognition primarily supports Chrome and a few other browsers. To ensure your application works across all modern browsers, integrate a polyfill.
This integration ensures that your application can process voice inputs consistently, regardless of the user’s browser.
Below is a detailed implementation example that demonstrates a more advanced voice assistant setup including how to record, process, and transcribe audio using React. This example uses the ‘ ReactMic ’ component for recording audio and ‘axios ’ for sending the audio to an API for transcription.
Javascript
import React, { useState } from ‘react’;
import { ReactMic } from ‘react-mic’;
import axios from ‘axios’;
const SpeechToText = () => {
const [recording, setRecording] = useState(false);
const [transcript, setTranscript] = useState(”);
const [error, setError] = useState(”);
const startRecording = () => {
setRecording(true);
};
const stopRecording = () => {
setRecording(false);
};
const onStop = async (recordedBlob) => {
const formData = new FormData();
formData.append(‘audio’, recordedBlob.blob);
try {
const response = await axios.post(‘YOUR_API_ENDPOINT’, formData, {
headers: {
‘Content-Type’: ‘multipart/form-data’,
},
});
setTranscript(response.data.transcript);
} catch (error) {
setError(‘An error occurred while transcribing the audio’);
}
};
return (
<div>
<ReactMic
record={recording}
className=”sound-wave”
onStop={onStop}
strokeColor=”#000000″
backgroundColor=”#FF4081″
/>
<button onClick={startRecording} type=”button”>Start</button>
<button onClick={stopRecording} type=”button”>Stop</button>
{transcript && <p>Transcript: {transcript}</p>}
{error && <p>Error: {error}</p>}
</div>
);
};
export default SpeechToText;
Integrating advanced technologies can lead to remarkable improvements in business efficiency and customer engagement. In the following, we will take a closer look at how React Speech Recognition can streamline your operations and boost your business performance:
According to various industry reports, the adoption of voice and speech recognition technology can save industries billions annually by automating tasks that would otherwise require manual intervention. This is particularly impactful in sectors like banking and insurance, where accuracy and speed are paramount.
For instance, doctors can use voice recognition to update patient records in real-time, enabling more efficient patient care. Similarly, legal professionals can transcribe court proceedings swiftly, ensuring accurate and timely documentation.
For example, integrating speech recognition with CRM systems can automate data entry, ensuring more accurate and timely customer information management. This not only saves time but also improves the quality of customer interactions.
To maximize the benefits of React Speech Recognition, businesses should follow some essential best practices for the strategic implementation process. Below is a compiled list of best practices for implementing React Speech Recognition
For example:
SpeechRecognition.startListening({ language: ‘en-US’ });
Implementing React Speech Recognition in your apps can transform how users interact and engage, making your business more efficient and customer-friendly. By leveraging tools like Reverie’s Speech-to-Text API , businesses can overcome language barriers and enhance communication across diverse markets. With its seamless Web Speech API functionality and customizable commands, your app can understand and respond to voice inputs effortlessly, making voice-enabled applications more intuitive and efficient.
React Speech Recognition can turn out to be a real game-changer to smarter, voice-enabled applications for your business. By pairing it with the advanced language technology solutions of Reverie, you ensure top-notch accuracy and versatility.
Get a firsthand experience of the future of voice-enabled applications by scheduling a
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Reverie Language Technologies Limited, a leader in Indian language localisation and user engagement technology solutions for over a decade, is working towards a vision to create Language Equality on the Internet.
Reverie’s language practice is dedicated to helping clients future-proof their rapidly expanding content by combining cutting-edge technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Neural Machine Translation (NMT) with best-practice approaches for optimizing content and business processes.