SOLVED

Edge can't use the mic in the Google Translate page

Steel Contributor

Edge Canary and Dev don't seem to know how to use a microphone. I tried the following steps both on a workstation connected to a Logitech's Brio webcam's microphone, and a Surface Pro 4 using the built-in microphone.

 

1- Go to Google's translate page www.translate.google.com

2- Select a language to translate from
3- Click on the microphone icon in box for the language of originAnnotation 2019-05-14 223830.jpg

4- Authorize access to mic if requested then start speaking when prompted
5- Expected result: Edge uses the mic to listen to what I say
6- What's happening: Edge doesn't pick up anything from the mic.

 

Google Chrome has no difficulty using Brio's microphone nor the Surface Pro 4's. Windows' Voice recorder also has no difficulty using the same mic.

56 Replies

@MissyQ 

Presumably this issue is also the same as microphone not working for Google Search ie at https://www.google.co.uk/ ?

@MissyQ I am glad the team considers it a bug and we can expect an eventual fix. Thanks.

 

@DonGill999 

 

 

Update please? This issue impacts accessing the Google homepage (https://www.google.com/) as well when using Microsoft Edge and prevents the microphone icon from appearing. If I access this page using a Chrome browser, there is a microphone in the search bar that you can click to verbally dictate search queries. If I access the page using the Edge browser, the microphone is not visible. I have tried using the Windows Key + H command, but it is pretty laggy and buggy. I have clicked the lock in the address bar to change the site permissions and attempted to give access to the microphone, yet it does not provide me that option (only shows me the ability to enable Adobe Flash). Finally I have activated microphone access privileges through Windows 10 settings / privacy menu but it has no impact either.  

 

Microsoft, when can we expect this bug to be fixed? I feel that Edge is vastly superior to Chrome and would like to continue using as my primary browser. However, I don't to have to open up a Chrome window just to use the microphone dictation feature.

 

current version:

Microsoft Edge 41.16299.15.0

Microsoft EdgeHTML 16.16299

I think it's important to understand that there are two things at work here.

 

The first one is a bug and is related to the WebSpeechAPI of the browser. The trivial fix for the bug would be to return a correct error message, indicating that the WebSpeechAPI is not functional. In the context of all websites using this feature like Google Search, Google Translate, DuoLingo etc. this means they can check for speech input support properly and act accordingly (Google usually just hides the microphone button, like it does with Firefox).

 

The second one is a feature and its up to Microsoft to decide if they want to implement it or not. Technically speaking it means to connect their Windows speech recognition to the WebSpeechAPI of the browser. Since they already offer easy access to the speech interface (Windows + H) I don't see any reason why they want to block this ... so I guess its just a matter of priorities at the moment ;)

@florianSB the thing to understand about this is that its ridiculous for a browser to restrict how you can or cannot use your microphone with a web site.  This has been an issue for far too long without any real response from Microsoft.

 

I continue to not use Edge because of this.  I'm not going to make my daily life more cumbersome because my browser won't let me use my microphone with a search engine.  It's ridiculous.

@Micheal_Espinola 

 

Its frustrating for me too but Microsoft does not "restrict how you can or cannot use your microphone with a web site". It's not the website that does the speech recognition its Google. The website just uses this Google service that is integrated into Chrome for free! If Microsoft decides to host servers for this (which they actually already do for Cortana) you get the same feature. If Google decides to take their servers down none of these websites will work anymore in Chrome.

 

I'm not trying to defend anyone here but I think its important to understand that you actually talk to Google when you use speech recognition in Chrome and not to the website host. It costs millions of dollars to host this infrastructure this is also the reason you'll probably not see it in Firefox for a long time.

@Bannykjk775 

I have the exact same problem.
I'm certain it isn't a microphone or hardware or driver issue at all.
It seems to only occur when called to a speech to text AI software service.

It also won't work on a microphone voice search on Google com either.

@NicolSD are you still facing this problem?

If yes, make sure report it through Feedback option in Microsoft Edge.

In my opinion there is nothing wrong, it is not a bug that the ONLY browser that can access Google translate and Google voice search is the google browser Chrome. Don't be naive, what would you expect Microsoft to say? Yeah, right, it's a bug. The microphone will work just fine with non-Google services. Seriously, Microsoft (and the others) have a HUGH incentive to fix this problem (if they could) or lose browser popularity and Google has every incentive to BLOCK that functionality to keep you around using Chrome services they pay for and developed. Microsoft Edge microphone works fine with BING! 

@florianSB Your right, but I believe the reason is This:  

In my opinion there is nothing wrong, it is not a bug that the ONLY browser that can access Google translate and Google voice search is the google browser Chrome. Don't be naive, what would you expect Microsoft to say? Yeah, right, it's a bug. The microphone will work just fine with non-Google services. Seriously, Microsoft (and the others) have a HUGH incentive to fix this problem (if they could) or lose browser popularity and Google has every incentive to BLOCK that functionality to keep you around using Chrome services they pay for and developed. Microsoft Edge microphone works fine with BING! 

@netplaceus 

Google primarily wants people to use their search engine and services, if thats done with Chrome ... even better for them, but they usually don't explicitly "block" a feature if that makes one of their services harder to use.

Chrome is still the only browser that fully supports speech recognition via the web speech API and its up to the website developer to use feature detection to properly implement it. Unfortunately if they don't it will look like a browser bug. At least Microsoft Edge finally sends a correct error message and they said that they want to fix this issue this month allegedly by implementing ASR properly so I guess we'll see the result soon ^^.

@NicolSD 

 

Just to keep this thread alive and perhaps bring a little seasonal good news, I'd point out that voice input to Google pages is, as far as I can tell, working well in the Canary and now Dev channels, so barring last minute hiccups we should see it in the Stable channel next month.   

@Noel Burgess 

the problem that me and some others are having is with Google.com voice search

it still doesn't work in version 89.0.731.0 (Official build) canary (64-bit)

the top feedback list also refers to google.com

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/discussions/top-feedback-summary-for-december-8/m-p/1968074

 

see if you can get it to work on canary

@HotCakeX 

Working fine for me in 89.0.731.0. I've only tried google.com and translate.google.com, but the experience is the same at both sites. 

 

What happens when you try? Are you still seeing the error message I see on Stable?

  

EA-Google-voice-search.png

@Noel Burgess 

I keep getting this error. no extension or tracking prevention is applied to it.

 

it shows me the prompt to allow mic access, then I talk and it shows the heart beat animation as if it's listening to my voice but then after few seconds, I get this

 

fdsfds.jpg

 

I'm assuming it's different from Google translate voice because that one works fine for me

@HotCakeX 

I wrote about bugs in the Web Speech implementation here:

 

Re: Web Speech API support ? - Page 2 - Microsoft Tech Community

 

Basically Edge is very eager to throw "network" errors where it should throw "no-speech" and it occasionally drops the "onend" event which will probably break 90% of all pages using it.

Hope a developer sees it or send it from feedback button on Edge, im afraid it might get lost in the forum