Hotword Plugin Free [Tasker Pl

Jolan Rensen

Contains adsIn-app purchases

About this app

This app is powered by Snowboy (https://snowboy.kitt.ai/) Hotword detection.

This free version has ads, if you don't want ads and want to support development, please look here https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nl.jolanrensen.hotwordPlugin

Ever wanted to reuse that old android phone you've got lying around as an always listening mic and let it trigger a Tasker task? Or wanted to shout something else to your phone than the same old "OK Google"?

Well then this is the plugin for you!
This app does need Tasker to work! (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.dinglisch.android.taskerm, this is a paid app with a 7 days free trial)

Visit https://snowboy.kitt.ai/ (NOTE Chrome doesn't work, Firefox does), train and download the voice models you like (preferably on the device where you will run this plugin). Then you can add them in the plugin and the fun can start!
Yes you can listen for as many hotwords at a time as you like and trigger a different task for each one.
NOTE that when the listening service is running, the mic will be blocked from other app. This ensures the best performance and speed, however if you want to use the mic in another app, you can simply disable and enable it from the notification (Oreo notification channels supported) or enable the setting that does this for you.
You can also control the state of the listening mode from within a task if you like, use the quick toggle, or quickly stop or start it using app shortcuts on your home screen.

To give you a taste of what's possible I already give you a few hotwords to play with, but since they are not trained to your phone's mic it's much advisable to train and download your own.

What makes this plugin so special is that it is powered by Snowboy. They built a C++ toolkit that is light-weight, offline, super fast and they included a website with a database where you can access a lot of hotwords that are already trained!
Since it's already compiled natively it only works for devices having an armv7a or armv8-aarch64 chip (I'm sorry for you guys having Intel chips).

To give you an idea of what you can do with it: I have an Nvidia SHIELD androidTV that has Google Assistant but no always listening support. So, I grabbed an old android phone, installed my plugin and whenever I say "Hey Google" it sends an adb command (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ADBPlugin) that starts Assistant!

For help please visit https://forum.xda-developers.com/u/tasker-tips-tricks/plugin-hotword-plugin-free-t3692422 or send me an email.

Ratings and reviews

Ui is good for me. Since it was released in 2017 I thought it will be stable. But it fire false alerts when Sensitivity is high and sometimes don't even listen to me when Sensitivity is low. Don't blaming cuz it's not famous. A Suggestion to Dev: Instead of the website just insert the web functions inside this app. As i think it will be more easy & efficient. My Phone: REDMI 10C Giving 5 Star Rating, cuz this is the only app I found which can do this stuff & more people can know about it. 😊

I'm on my brand new phone, a Moto g7, and this works about half the time. The delay is still far too long, about 10-30 seconds before Assistant actually opens up, and by then it says "Can't reach Google". it also keeps false starting constantly no matter what sensitivity and gain I set it to. I guess a custom wake word is just impossible. 5 stars simply because this app clearly isn't a scam like all the others, and you've been exceedingly helpful with troubleshooting.

So this app works just as promised. That's not to say there are no hiccups. Google assistant will not function if another app is using the microphone at the same time. The easy fix is to tell the app not use the microphone in the background of other apps also doing so. The only problem is you can't ask Google assistant follow-up questions and you can't trigger it from your home screen if you use the stock Google Now launcher. A solution would be the ability to disable when specific apps are open

What’s new

4.1.1
Fixed link to snowboy.jolanrensen.nl
Update to Android 14
Removed all file permissions
New "already imported" screen where you can now delete imported hw's
Fixed donations (if you got a refund in 2022/2023, try again :) )

before:
Fixed crashes related to the list of hotwords
Rebuilt Tasker communication completely (you need to set up all your tasks again, unfortunately)
Material You support
Figured out on Android 11 the service can only be started from the app or notification :(