Tech Forum

With the recent launch of the Google Home voice activated speaker it and Amazon's Echo with Alexa have become very popular. Once wish that I have for these devices is to have it read the scriptures to me. Currently this is not available on the Google Home but only has abilities to pull up a scripture of the day from a bible services. The Bible App is currently supported on the Echo and offers the exact functionality I hope to have through the Google Home from the Gospel Library one day. Here is a link to their application. I am not sure of the amount of work this would take but I know that many that use the Google Home, especially those this accessibility needs would greatly benefit from this being an option.

I would love to know what everyone else things and what the possibilities would be.

Thank you!

With Alexa even in the Dash Wand you can ask it to read from a specific list of verses for a day. The author of the Alexa skill has provided further interactions or "skills" for each of the Standard Works and General Conference. To begin, here is the one for the Book of Mormon: https://www.amazon.com/Read-Book-Mormon ... B01MXUKDFJ

I hope I or someone else gets to the point of adding the proper tags in the Gospel Library app for Android so Google Search/Assistant will be able to parse it by voice search. This seems close enough to get done and automatically will provide the service capability to get to the respective areas of the app. This may also then allow us to add the next skill to read back by just asking for a verse or more.

Are there any updates on the progress of this functionality from a Google Home? I received a Google Home for Christmas and am frankly quite disappointed with the limitations it has since I have always assumed that Google has the world at its fingertips. :/

I have to admit that part of the issue here is a huge learning curve I have yet to overcome. I really don't know how to teach Google Home to do anything so it isn't shocking I have not yet figured out how to get her to access my Gospel Library App.

I love the idea of making it as easy as possible to listen to the audio version of the scriptures. It would be great if you could request a particular verse through voice on standalone devices like Amazon Echos and Google Homes, as well as on mobile devices. We should make it smart enough to know if you just want one verse or if you want it to just keep reading beginning at a particular verse. Our family would likely use it to listen to the BoM365 readings each day. I think it would also be great if there were radio stations (AM, FM, HDRadio, Satellite Radio, and/or Tune-In for example) where someone could just hit a pre-set and go straight to a constant loop of the BoM365 verses of the day.

It would also be nice if you can get conference talks too.

Also want to add that I would like general conference available through google home. Would be nice to ask Google to play it during breakfast. Currently can cast it from my phone, but would be easier to just ask Google to do it.

So getting google to open the application is simple. Simply press and hold your home button until google assistant opens. Then tell google to open scriptures. It will go to the last chapter you read.

Right now that's only available from your phone. I am working on finding a string of voice commands that will open the app, turn on the audio and then cast it to my speaker. So far you can do that manually but the voice command is trickier. If someone knows what it is please let me know. I assume that it will involve a custom made shortcut in google home. I've already tried ifttt but if anyone has cracked that code I'd appreciate the help.

Btw the steps for casting any audio from the LDS library are as follows. Locate what you'd like to hear (scriptures, talks etc.)> Select audio (the headphones in the bottom right corner)> select the cast option (a rectangle with 3 signal waves coming out of the corner) > select the google assistant enabled speaker or television you like to play the talk/scripture.

Also note that the menu (the 3 dots next to the cast option) has the option to turn off continuous play. Meaning it will stop after the chapter or talk is over. It will not go to the next automatically.

I see several small skills that will make Google Home or Amazon Alexa play scriptures or conference talks but they all look very limited and early stage so far. I would love to see voice controls for the whole Gospel Library, but I'm guessing it will be a while before we see that. If anyone here knows what it will take to make that happen, please let us know.

Currently, Alexa lists 57 skills with LDS in the title including hymns, scripture mastery, daily message, primary songs, general conference, temple trivia, and talks by several prophets and apostles (eg. President Nelson talks, President Eyring talks) etc.
Google Home lists 10 actions with LDS in the title and they are mostly podcasts.

brucejohnhansen wrote:It would also be nice if you can get conference talks too.

You may have to add Google Podcasts, but you can listen to the latest conference talks by saying:

"Hey Google play The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints General Conference Podcast"

If you stop in the middle of a session it will resume from that point when you say the command again.

You can cast the audio from your phone to the speaker. That works for now.