Microsoft Outlook for iOS now lets you use your voice to write emails

Social media news

Microsoft is adding voice capabilities to its Outlook mobile app that will let people write emails, schedule meetings, and search using their voice. The new Cortana-powered voice capabilities will be available first in Outlook for iOS, with Android support coming soon. A new plus sign icon in Outlook mobile will appear soon that lets you activate the voice mode. You’ll be able to search for co-workers, files, and calendar entries. You can even use voice to attach files quickly, as Outlook is using the Microsoft Graph to surface relevant documents. Dictation has been a big part of Word and Outlook on the desktop for years, and it’s now appearing in the mobile version of Outlook. You can respond to messages with your voice on iOS, or write new emails using the speech-to-text functionality. This isn’t the first time that Cortana voice functionality has appeared in Outlook. Microsoft has been gradually building to this point with a dedicated Play My Emails feature inside Outlook mobile. This new update brings voice to nearly every part of Outlook mobile, though. Alongside the voice addition, Microsoft is also launching a separate Scheduler Microsoft 365 service.


Apple brought back the beloved magnifying glass for selecting text in iOS 15

Apple’s text selection magnifying glass has reappeared in the iOS 15 beta, and Apple’s own site confirms its return by listing it as a feature. Bringing the feature back is a reversal from when Apple made the decision to dump it in iOS 13, which is a bit of a rare occurrence: Apple doesn’t usually go back after it’s done away with something (bringing back scissor switches in its keyboards after years of butterfly switches is a notable exception). The return of the little pop-up is welcome, though: I can only speak for myself, but since iOS 13’s release, I’ve constantly been struggling without the helpful little magnifier. The new version of the text magnifier seems to be a bit smaller than the old one but it’s at least better than the nothing that appears in iOS 13 and 14. It will, at the very least, solve the biggest problem with the current selection system: that your thumb is covering the text you’re trying to select, which makes it a little difficult to see what’s being selected until you pick your thumb up from the screen.

RELATED POST

COMMENTS