Summary

  • Microsoft is ending official support for its Vista-era Speech Recognition tool and may remove it in a future update, as it is being replaced by Voice Access in Windows 11.
  • Windows 10 users currently do not have Voice Access, but Microsoft may either migrate the feature to Windows 10 or keep Speech Recognition without further updates.
  • Windows 11 users are unlikely to miss Speech Recognition, as Voice Access is more accurate and performs the same tasks, suggesting Microsoft is phasing out the older tool to focus on the superior one.

When was the last time you used Windows' Speech Recognition tool? If you forgot that Speech Recognition even existed, you're not alone. Now, Microsoft is giving the axe to the Vista-era feature, ending official support for it and potentially removing it altogether in a future update.

Microsoft gives Speech Recognition the boot

Microsoft maintains a list of deprecated Windows features, announcing all the tools that it's slowly phasing out. Now, as listed on Microsoft Learn (via Neowin), Speech Recognition is the newest feature to get the chop. Fortunately, those who depend on voice controls to navigate their Windows 11 PC have nothing to fear:

Windows speech recognition is deprecated and is no longer being developed. This feature is being replaced with voice access. Voice access is available for Windows 11, version 22H2, or later devices.

Microsoft states that this change will affect Windows 10 and 11; however, Windows 10 users don't have Voice Access on their systems. Despite this, there's a good chance that Microsoft won't leave its Windows 10 users in the dark. Microsoft will likely either migrate Voice Access to Windows 10 or keep Speech Recognition around on Windows 10 but not update it anymore.

On the other hand, Windows 11 users likely won't miss Speech Recognition. Voice Access does the same job as Speech Recognition, but users find it a lot more accurate than its older brother. As such, deprecating Speech Recognition is likely a move by Microsoft to phase out the inferior product so it can turn all of its attention to Voice Access.

Whichever boat you're in, there's plenty of support for those who have difficulty navigating their PC. If you haven't yet, you can quickly set up voice access on Windows 11 and start commanding your PC with your voice. And Windows 10 has a ton of keyboard shortcuts that make navigating the operating system a lot easier.