Talk to Gladys from the dashboard with the voice assistant
Introduced in Gladys Assistant 4.77, the Voice assistant widget lets you talk to Gladys directly from your dashboard: speak a question, read the live transcription and AI response, and hear the answer read aloud on your device.
It is especially handy on a wall-mounted tablet or a smartphone left on a counter. Your smart home becomes voice-controlled without a third-party assistant.
What can you do?
The voice assistant uses the same LLM-powered agent as the Gladys chat. There is no fixed list of commands: speak naturally, and Gladys understands.
You can control devices, read sensors, launch or create scenes, view cameras, and ask general questions. See usage examples in the AI integration documentation.
Prerequisites
- A Gladys Plus subscription with your instance connected to the gateway.
- A browser that supports microphone recording (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari on recent versions).
- A secure connection (HTTPS) to use the microphone. If you access Gladys remotely, open it via plus.gladysassistant.com.
- Microphone permission granted in your browser (on Safari: Settings > Safari > Microphone).
Without Gladys Plus, the widget is displayed but the microphone stays disabled. A message invites you to connect your instance to Gladys Plus.
Add the widget to your dashboard
Go to the dashboard and click Edit.
Add a Voice assistant widget, then click Save.
No additional configuration is required: the widget is ready to use once Gladys Plus is connected.
Use the voice assistant
- Click the microphone button in the widget.
- Speak your question. Recording stops automatically when you stop talking.
- Gladys displays what you said and the AI response in the widget.
- The answer is played aloud on your device (text-to-speech).
The assistant takes into account your recent exchanges with Gladys to provide more contextual answers.
Widget states
| State | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Speak | Ready. Click the microphone to start. |
| Listening... | Recording in progress. Speak now. |
| Processing... | Gladys is transcribing your message and generating a response. |
| Speaking... | The response is being read aloud. |
Wall-mounted tablet tip
If you use Gladys on a touchscreen tablet, you can display the dashboard in full screen by adding ?fullscreen=force to the URL. See the dashboard introduction for details.
Limitations
This is a first proof of concept. The feature will evolve based on community feedback. Feel free to share your experience on the forum announcement.
Speech synthesis is optimized for low latency. Some values (temperatures, units such as ppm or °C) may occasionally be mispronounced. We are monitoring improvements on the text-to-speech side.
Troubleshooting
| Problem | What to do |
|---|---|
| Microphone disabled | Check that Gladys Plus is connected in Settings > Gladys Plus. |
| "The microphone requires a secure connection" | Open Gladys via HTTPS, ideally at plus.gladysassistant.com. |
| Microphone blocked on Safari | Allow microphone access in Settings > Safari > Microphone. |
| "Voice recording is not available in this browser" | Try a recent version of Chrome, Firefox, Edge, or Safari. |
| Generic error | Verify your Gladys Plus connection and that your instance can reach the gateway. |