People

Orbit can tell voices apart. Record yours once and it greets you by name; record the people you live with and it knows them too. Everything on this page used to need a terminal.

Checking what is set up on your Mac…

Record a voice

Click Record, then speak for a few seconds — what you had for breakfast, what you are working on, anything. Orbit stays quiet and will not act on it. Do it two or three times on different days and it gets noticeably better at telling you from somebody who sounds like you.

  






  
Voices it knows

  

  

    
    
    
  

  

  
Check reads back how well somebody's recordings agree with
  each other. One that agrees with none of the others caught the wrong person,
  and it drags the average towards them — which is how a stranger ends up
  being recognised as you. Prune drops those.






  
Somebody you would rather it ignored

  

    

      
      
    

    
The voices worth banning are the ones with no name, so
    this keeps the last thing it heard, labels it, and refuses it from then on.
    It will not let you ban yourself.

    

  






  
Turning voices away

  

  

    
    
    
  

  

  
Leave this off until you have checked it recognises you
  — say something, then Score that voice. If it scores you below the
  threshold, turning people away turns you away. Say the bypass code out
  loud to wave a refused voice through for one conversation.