Voice commands during presentations: 5 phrases worth learning

The best interface during a live talk is no interface. Your hands are on the clicker or the mic; mousing into a sidebar breaks the flow. Voice commands fix that. Here are the five that matter.

1. "Let's vote: A, B, or C — [question]?"

Triggers a live poll. Say the options aloud, include a question, and the audience sees a poll on their phone in two seconds.

Example: "Let's vote: should we ship on Tuesday, Thursday, or next Monday?"

Works in TA pilot when the Poll button is armed or auto-capture is enabled. The phrase doesn't have to be exact — "let's poll," "show of hands," "who thinks" all trigger the same behavior.

2. "Let's take X minutes"

Starts a countdown timer. Say a number from 1 to 60 and the timer appears on screen with the requested duration.

Examples:

• "Let's take 5 minutes"
• "Quick break, 10 minutes"
• "Write your answer for 2 minutes"

The timer ticks on-screen where both presenter and audience can see it. At zero, a soft chime plays and the timer dismisses itself.

3. "Play some music" / "Stop the music"

Fades ambient background music in or out. Useful during transitions, scanning windows, or the answered-question pile at the end.

TA pilot has a curated rotation of short loop-friendly tracks. Neither vocal nor attention-grabbing — the point is to fill silence, not compete with your voice.

4. "Captions on in [language]"

Enables or changes live captions. The default language is the one set at session creation, but you can switch on the fly.

Examples:

• "Captions on"
• "Captions in Spanish please"
• "Turn off captions"

Captions render on the attendee's device (not overlaid on your slides), so different audience members can watch in different languages simultaneously.

5. "How's everyone doing?" / "Status check"

Triggers an anonymous 3-option check-in: understanding (got it / confused / lost). Results roll up in the sidebar as a simple bar chart.

Alternative phrases: "quick check," "are we tracking," "any confusion so far."

Why voice beats mouse

Three reasons:

1. Speed. Saying "5 minutes" is faster than mousing to a sidebar

button, picking a duration, clicking start.

1. Flow. You stay in your delivery. No context-switch to a UI.
2. Integration. The voice command itself is part of the talk. "Let's

take 5 minutes" is a statement to the audience that also starts the timer.

How to adopt these

• Learn one at a time. Start with timers (easiest to test).
• Practice in a dry run before the real talk. Say the phrase, watch

what happens.

• If a command doesn't fire, say it again with slightly different

wording. The model is flexible but not perfect.

• If you find a phrase you use but TA pilot doesn't recognize,

mention it in the extension's feedback channel — we're continuously expanding the phrase library.

The goal isn't to be a robot reciting magic words. The goal is to integrate commands into your natural delivery so the audience never notices you ran a poll or started a timer — it just happened.