“Xbox, on” and other commands you need to know for your new Xbox One

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The Xbox One came out a few days ago, did you get one? If so, by now you’ve started to explore some of the Kinect 2.0 functionality that every Xbox One comes bundled with. It’s fairly incredible despite some initial growing pains. There’s a whole set of both voice commands to learn and gestures if you want to really control your Xbox One like a pro. Here they are.

Attached below are two PDFs from Microsoft. They both contain the same information, but the organization is slightly different between the two. Pick whichever one you want, but do keep them around at the beginning as you get up to speed with some of the cool voice commands you can give to your Xbox One.

Besides “Xbox, on”, our favorite command by far is “Xbox, record that”. That one command is going to change how we game going forward. Say that command and the Xbox One will automagically save the last thirty seconds of gameplay to your account. There have been countless times in the past where we’d get insane kills in games like Halo and would do anything to show our friends, but the means were cumbersome. Xbox One makes sharing unbelievable moments an afterthought.

Xbox One Voice Commads

One PDF below also contains some diagrams for the new gesture commands on the Xbox One. It seems Microsoft is pushing voice commands over gestures, but they haven’t abandoned support for your paws just yet. Voice is by far a better experience, so it’s understandable why Microsoft is pushing voice. A new gesture is the ability to go home by gripping the sides of your display and pinching them in. Hard to vision? Just click the first PDF below to see a diagram of it in action.

We’ll be exploring the Xbox One more in the coming weeks. Have you guys found anything useful with the Xbox One that you want to share? Sound off below.

PDF with voice and gesture commands

PDF with voice commands

Via: Major Nelson

Sam Sabri
Sam Sabri
60 Comments
  • Fast, Fluid & easy to use... And will only keep getting better
  • So true!
  • I have a feeling all those voice commands only work in English. Would I be wrong?
  • French and one more language which I don't remember now.
  • German works as well...
  • I somehow doubt that "äksboks päälle" will ever work.
  • I use it for tv all day and other apps. Mine is "Xbox, Watch TV" . TV gets back from anywhere in the Xbox, I like that. Plus Xbox watch NFL.
  • It says it is saved to Skydrive, but I can't see it. Am I missing something?
  • Click one of those two links and it should work for you. I uploaded the PDFs to my SkyDrive. Is it now working for you? Looks good on my end. They're public and everything. 
  • Sorry, I wasn't clear. I used the video upload on the Xbox One and it says it saved the videos to Skydrive. But when I look, I cannot find them. What am I missing.
  • HA! Yes. You should be a little more clear next time so we can help ya out ;) There's now a new folder in your "pictures" folder that will have your videos from the Xbox One! See it? Good luck!
  • I found it. Thank you!!!! I will sing at your next wedding. ;)
  • lol
  • I wish I can get 1 of it....
  • I'm just impressed how smoothly it works. It has no problems with my Aussie accent, and the reviews where they said it was only 60% responsive? I'm not sure what they're on about. I sit about three metres from the kinect and it responds quickly and easily even when I'm speaking softly. Highly impressed!
  • Your only going to have problems if your telling your Xbox to get on the caaa (car) lol
  • My assumption is user error during setup. There's a part that has to do with volume recognition and leveling.
  • I hope they make them available in other languages too
  • "Xbox one". . . Cost less money.
  • +1
  • Ha ha ha
  • good one
  • Xbox.....turn on my ps4
  • Lmao
  • That's really cool. Microsoft should advertise these voice commands, that'll get them some more sales.
  • They do, man. Just nobody believes it because Siri is mentally handicapped.
  • Don't forget physically too. Siri put a damper on all voice controls. The best memory I have of Siri is asking her the best smartphone to buy and she would always say Windows Phone Lumia 900 lol until apple fixed that and that's when they broke Siri
  • Xbox One. Be available in India.
  • Yeah!
  • What about in other languages?
  • I agree.
  • Xbox on doesnt work on my less than year old Magnavox. Volume, mute, and stuff work fine tho. Probably the biggest first world problem, but still, a little disappointing.
  • Xbox, murder Sony. I use that all the time.
  • i've read a news in my local newspaper said ps4 playroom feature has been used to make porn and play it and everyone who has ps4 can access it means underage kid too . -1 to sony i guess XD
  • "Xbox One, I wish for more wishes"
  • for some reason voice recognition has been awful with me it doesnt start listening when i say xbox 
  • Have you done the following? http://support.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-one/kinect/kinect-doesnt-respond-to-voice-commands I had to reset and recalibrate and then everything worked.  The XboxOne forum has a bunch of people responding that this worked.  You may just need to reset the Kinect Sensor
  • Hopefully, MS brings great voice commands like these to WP8.1 with Cortana.
  • I really hope so!
  • Would be nice to have phone laying on counter and say "Cortana, send a message to all Xbox live friends Time for clan wars" or Cortana, who's your favorite Spartan"
  • Nope, because even though everything works if I set my Xbox to US region, the dumb yanks at Microsoft seem to think it can only understand yanks saying Xbox On.
  • FWIW, it understands my southern accent just fine so far...
  • Xbox On doesn't always work, even in a quite room.... All of the other Voice Commands work flawlessly
  • Have done the following? http://support.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-one/kinect/kinect-doesnt-respond-to-voice-commands I had to reset and recalibrate and then everything worked.  The XboxOne forum has a bunch of people responding that this worked.  You may just need to reset the Kinect Sensor
  • I already did. I even did it with back ground noises to help it but it didn't. Its about 10 feet away and even if I'm two feet away it doesn't matter. XBOX ON doesn't work right away I honestly have to say it 4-5 times. I don't mind pressing the power button at all. I just wish the voice command worked 95% of the time
  • When I tell it to "Watch ESPN" it doesn't switch channels. I have to use the cable box remote to switch channels. Is it suppose to switch channels for you? It also has all these forward, pause...etc icons at the bottom of the tv screen. What are they for? Please forgive my ignorance.
  • "Xbox, Watch ESPN." You can only say "Watch ESPN" when you have the OneGuide open and the xbox is listening to you (you can tell when the Xbox is listening when you see a bunch of green words on the screen and there's a stop listening icon on the top right corner.) Also, the media transport controls at the bottom (play/pause/ff/rw/etc) are to control your cable's recorded video and DVR if it supports it. Many cable boxes nowadays will allow you to pause, rewind, and fast forward through live TV up until what has been aired. You can use "Xbox, pause" and other voice commands to control your cable box if it can do that. Also if you have a DVR, you can start a recorded show or movie (with your cable remote) and use the same commands to pause/play/rw/ff/etc as well.
  • Thanks for the info. I'll retry some of these commands tonight. My cable box may not support some of the commands. In a little over a week my Motorola cable box is being replaced with a TiVo. I would expect it to support all the commands for the TiVo.
  • Can you change the name?  I think you should be able to "name" your Xbox, lol. And does, "Xbox, show me boobies!", do anything? lol
  • Also, a flat out awesome little spoken of feature:  Xbox One will control your audio receiver as well as your tv & cable box!  I have all my components (except my cable box now going through the xb1) going through the hdmi audio receiver, and I was able to tell the xb1 which type of receiver I have.  Now volume up/down, mute, and "xbox on" voice commands all work for it as well.  So awesome.
  • I have been very impressed so far how this all works. The ability to switch back and forth between TV, games and apps is very quick and smooth. The extra cost you spend for the Kinect and it's abilities is more than worth it.
  • sorry for double post, reply didn't work right:   I think a large key to the smoth operating when games are involved is the required install.  While i'm ok with required installs (long time pc gamer), my biggest issue is the choice of only a 500gb hard drive and no ability to install files to an external drive.  This means that you will only get a few games on at a time and in a year when everyone has 20-25+ games, you will have to "choose" which ones you want to have installed and play.  I hope there's an update within the year that allows for game installs to an external drive...
  • I think a large key to the smoth operating when games are involved is the required install.  While i'm ok with required installs (long time pc gamer), my biggest issue is the choice of only a 500gb hard drive and no ability to install files to an external drive.  This means that you will only get a few games on at a time and in a year when everyone has 20-25+ games, you will have to "choose" which ones you want to have installed and play.  I hope there's an update within the year that allows for game installs to an external drive...
  • Microsoft have already said they will support external USB drives with an upcoming update. USB port is on the side of the console.
  • They said they will support usb drives, but it is unclear as to if they will support game installs to usb drives.
  • I don't see why they wouldn't. You can download a full games to the external USB drives now. No issues. Installing is just downloading it to your drive.
  • I love the voice controls. I use them a lot. Not all the time cuz that is gimmicky but when they are convenient to use them I do. Impresses guests to say the least. The worst one for me is using Xbox on. It is 50/50 so far. Either it works the first time flawlessly or doesn't work after saying Xbox on twenty times. Almost everything else works fine as long as tv volume is not too high.
  • I've been using "Xbox Record that" like no tomorrow.  Was using it on Forza 5, mostly.  Had quite a few clips of me beating my friends "shadows" (as I forget what they call them).  Went like 15 races being first with a Genesis, while my friends were using R8s and all the Class "A" cars.  So I had to record it and say "Ask any racer. Any real racer. It don't matter if you win by an inch or a mile. Winning's winning" like Dom in Fast and the Furious!    
  • Drivatars! And it's totally awesome. 
  • Logitech has just added the remote device profile for XBox One so my Harmony Ultimate works now. Since I have the One controlling the power functions of the TV, cable box and audio receiver ALL the time I just removed the power functions from the Logitech profiles. So you're not relegated to just using voice or XBox controller you can do both. Awesome.