Pebble Time, Steel, and Time Round apps can finally add voice commands thanks to Nuance

Probably the biggest shortcoming when it comes to Pebble smartwatches vs their Android Wear counterparts is Pebble’s very limited support for voice dictation. Sure, you can reply to messages and a few other things, but that was kind of it. This limited functionality isn’t anywhere near as robust as it is on Android Wear, meaning you can’t launch apps or use your voice commands inside other apps. That changes starting today.

Leveling the playing field between Google’s Android Wear devices and Pebble is Nuance who’s announced that they’ve officially partnered up with Pebble to bring their stellar voice recognition technology to the platform (and for the first time, voice dictation on iOS). The update is already available on the Pebble Time, Pebble Time Steel, and will soon launch with the Pebble Time Round on November 8th.

With the new Dictation API, Pebble developers can now use Nuance’s voice recognition to power their own apps, bringing that hands-free experience Android Wear users have been enjoying all this time. It’s all available right now in the new Pebble 3.6 firmware which includes other improvements to timeline, notifications, and general stability. You can ready more about it in Pebble’s blog post here.