Brew with your hands full

With a kettle in one hand and wet fingers on the other, the screen is the last thing you want to touch. Turn on voice in Gota and it reads every step aloud at the right moment, then listens for a one-word answer to move the brew along. It works in all six languages the app speaks, and it is free.

What Gota says

At the start of each step, after a short chime, Gota tells you what to do: the water to reach, the pace to pour at, the technique (a spiral, the centre, a swirl), the temperature and, on brewers like the Hario Switch, whether the valve is open or closed. It counts you in with 3-2-1, tells you when a wait begins and how long it lasts, and closes the brew with “Done. Enjoy your coffee.”

What it understands

Each command only works at the moment it makes sense, so a stray word can't skip a step:

You say	When	What happens
“Done” (or “ready”, “all set”)	A step is waiting for you	The step closes and the next one starts
“Start pour” (or “begin pour”, “pour now”)	Before a pour	The pour starts on your word
“Resume” (or “continue”, “go on”)	The brew is paused	The brew picks up where it stopped
“Finish” (or “end it”)	The last step	The brew ends and goes to your journal

To pause, use the button: pausing by voice was removed so a word in the kitchen can't stop a pour by accident.

In your language

The words follow the language of the app. These are the commands, as you say them:

Language	Done	Start pour	Resume	Finish
English	Done	Start pour	Resume	Finish
Spanish	Hecho	Empezar vertido	Reanudar	Terminar
Japanese	完了	注湯を開始	再開	終了
Portuguese	Pronto	Começar despejo	Continuar	Terminar
Korean	완료	붓기 시작	재개	종료
German	Fertig	Guss starten	Fortsetzen	Beenden

Each one also accepts a few natural alternatives — “listo” in Spanish, “weiter” in German, “계속” in Korean — and capitals and accents don't matter. In Japanese and Korean the command can sit inside a longer sentence.

Turning it on

Voice guidance and voice control are separate switches and both start off. Turn them on in Settings › Brewing, from the audio sheet during a brew, or when Gota asks during setup. Voice works with every recipe, with or without a Bluetooth scale, and costs nothing: it is part of the free app.

Privacy

Gota asks iOS to recognise speech on the iPhone itself. If your language has no on-device model installed, iOS may use Apple's servers for recognition. The words Gota hears stay on your phone: it doesn't send them anywhere, and it only listens while a step is waiting for an answer. The spoken steps use the voices installed on your iPhone.