Skip to main content
Evelant
DocsFeaturesVoice Ask

Voice Ask

Voice Ask is the fastest way to ask about the page you're on. Press Alt+S, say your question, and the answer appears right on the orb — you never open the chat panel.

It's built for the questions that aren't worth a full conversation: "what is this PDF about?", "who is this person?", "summarise this section".

How it works

  1. Press Alt+S. The orb grows and pulses to show it's listening, with a microphone icon in the centre.
  2. Speak your question. The orb bounces as it picks up your voice. Take your time — it waits for you to start, and only finishes once you've actually stopped talking.
  3. See what it heard. The orb expands into a capsule showing your question back to you, so a misheard word is obvious straight away.
  4. Read the answer. The reply replaces your question in the same capsule. Click the orb or press Alt+S again to dismiss it early; otherwise it tidies itself away.

What it can see

Voice Ask uses the same page context as the rest of Evelant, so "this page", "this PDF" and "this person" all work as you'd expect. If the page hasn't been indexed or the question isn't about the page at all, it answers from general knowledge instead.

Cost

Each Voice Ask costs 1 credit, the same as a Quick Summary — it deliberately uses a fast, inexpensive model rather than your selected chat model, because it's built for short answers.

Microphone and privacy

  • The microphone is used only while a Voice Ask session is active. It is never listening in the background.
  • Speech is transcribed by your browser's built-in Web Speech API. The audio is never recorded, stored, or sent to Evelant's servers — only the resulting text.
  • The first time you use it, Chrome asks for microphone permission. Evelant opens a dedicated tab for this, because the permission has to be granted to the extension itself rather than to each website you visit — grant it once and it works everywhere.
  • You can turn Voice Ask off completely from the extension popup, which stops it requesting the microphone at all.

Good to know

  • Alt+S is ignored while you're typing in a text field, so it won't interrupt you mid-sentence on a page that uses the same shortcut.
  • It works on any page where the orb is visible, and doesn't require the chat panel to be open.
  • If nothing is said, it stops quietly rather than sending an empty question.