speech to text vocal

Speech to Text - Voice Typing & Transcription

Take notes with your voice for free, or automatically transcribe audio & video recordings. secure, accurate & blazing fast..

~ Proudly serving millions of users since 2015 ~

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Dictate Notes

Start taking notes, on our online voice-enabled notepad right away, for free.

Transcribe Recordings

Automatically transcribe audios & videos - upload files from your device or link to an online resource (Drive, YouTube, TikTok and more).

Speechnotes is a reliable and secure web-based speech-to-text tool that enables you to quickly and accurately transcribe your audio and video recordings, as well as dictate your notes instead of typing, saving you time and effort. With features like voice commands for punctuation and formatting, automatic capitalization, and easy import/export options, Speechnotes provides an efficient and user-friendly dictation and transcription experience. Proudly serving millions of users since 2015, Speechnotes is the go-to tool for anyone who needs fast, accurate & private transcription. Our Portfolio of Complementary Speech-To-Text Tools Includes:

Voice typing - Chrome extension

Dictate instead of typing on any form & text-box across the web. Including on Gmail, and more.

Transcription API & webhooks

Speechnotes' API enables you to send us files via standard POST requests, and get the transcription results sent directly to your server.

Zapier integration

Combine the power of automatic transcriptions with Zapier's automatic processes. Serverless & codeless automation! Connect with your CRM, phone calls, Docs, email & more.

Android Speechnotes app

Speechnotes' notepad for Android, for notes taking on your mobile, battle tested with more than 5Million downloads. Rated 4.3+ ⭐

iOS TextHear app

TextHear for iOS, works great on iPhones, iPads & Macs. Designed specifically to help people with hearing impairment participate in conversations. Please note, this is a sister app - so it has its own pricing plan.

Audio & video converting tools

Tools developed for fast - batch conversions of audio files from one type to another and extracting audio only from videos for minimizing uploads.

Our Sister Apps for Text-To-Speech & Live Captioning

Complementary to Speechnotes

Reads out loud texts, files & web pages

Reads out loud texts, PDFs, e-books & websites for free

Speechlogger

Live Captioning & Translation

Live captions & translations for online meetings, webinars, and conferences.

Need Human Transcription? We Can Offer a 10% Discount Coupon

We do not provide human transcription services ourselves, but, we partnered with a UK company that does. Learn more on human transcription and the 10% discount .

Dictation Notepad

Start taking notes with your voice for free

Speech to Text online notepad. Professional, accurate & free speech recognizing text editor. Distraction-free, fast, easy to use web app for dictation & typing.

Speechnotes is a powerful speech-enabled online notepad, designed to empower your ideas by implementing a clean & efficient design, so you can focus on your thoughts. We strive to provide the best online dictation tool by engaging cutting-edge speech-recognition technology for the most accurate results technology can achieve today, together with incorporating built-in tools (automatic or manual) to increase users' efficiency, productivity and comfort. Works entirely online in your Chrome browser. No download, no install and even no registration needed, so you can start working right away.

Speechnotes is especially designed to provide you a distraction-free environment. Every note, starts with a new clear white paper, so to stimulate your mind with a clean fresh start. All other elements but the text itself are out of sight by fading out, so you can concentrate on the most important part - your own creativity. In addition to that, speaking instead of typing, enables you to think and speak it out fluently, uninterrupted, which again encourages creative, clear thinking. Fonts and colors all over the app were designed to be sharp and have excellent legibility characteristics.

Example use cases

• Voice typing
• Writing notes, thoughts
• Medical forms - dictate
• Transcribers (listen and dictate)

Transcription Service

Start transcribing

Fast turnaround - results within minutes. Includes timestamps, auto punctuation and subtitles at unbeatable price. Protects your privacy: no human in the loop, and (unlike many other vendors) we do NOT keep your audio. Pay per use, no recurring payments. Upload your files or transcribe directly from Google Drive, YouTube or any other online source. Simple. No download or install. Just send us the file and get the results in minutes.

• Transcribe interviews
• Captions for Youtubes & movies
• Auto-transcribe phone calls or voice messages
• Students - transcribe lectures
• Podcasters - enlarge your audience by turning your podcasts into textual content
• Text-index entire audio archives

Key Advantages

Speechnotes is powered by the leading most accurate speech recognition AI engines by Google & Microsoft. We always check - and make sure we still use the best. Accuracy in English is very good and can easily reach 95% accuracy for good quality dictation or recording.

Lightweight & fast

Both Speechnotes dictation & transcription are lightweight-online no install, work out of the box anywhere you are. Dictation works in real time. Transcription will get you results in a matter of minutes.

Super Private & Secure!

Super private - no human handles, sees or listens to your recordings! In addition, we take great measures to protect your privacy. For example, for transcribing your recordings - we pay Google's speech to text engines extra - just so they do not keep your audio for their own research purposes.

Health advantages

Typing may result in different types of Computer Related Repetitive Strain Injuries (RSI). Voice typing is one of the main recommended ways to minimize these risks, as it enables you to sit back comfortably, freeing your arms, hands, shoulders and back altogether.

Saves you time

Need to transcribe a recording? If it's an hour long, transcribing it yourself will take you about 6! hours of work. If you send it to a transcriber - you will get it back in days! Upload it to Speechnotes - it will take you less than a minute, and you will get the results in about 20 minutes to your email.

Saves you money

Speechnotes dictation notepad is completely free - with ads - or a small fee to get it ad-free. Speechnotes transcription is only $0.1/minute, which is X10 times cheaper than a human transcriber! We offer the best deal on the market - whether it's the free dictation notepad ot the pay-as-you-go transcription service.

Dictation - Free

• Online dictation notepad
• Voice typing Chrome extension

Dictation - Premium

• Premium online dictation notepad
• Premium voice typing Chrome extension
• Support from the development team

Transcription

$0.1 /minute.

• Pay as you go - no subscription
• Audio & video recordings
• Speaker diarization in English
• Generate captions .srt files
• REST API, webhooks & Zapier integration

Compare plans

Privacy policy.

We at Speechnotes, Speechlogger, TextHear, Speechkeys value your privacy, and that's why we do not store anything you say or type or in fact any other data about you - unless it is solely needed for the purpose of your operation. We don't share it with 3rd parties, other than Google / Microsoft for the speech-to-text engine.

Privacy - how are the recordings and results handled?

- transcription service.

Our transcription service is probably the most private and secure transcription service available.

• HIPAA compliant.
• No human in the loop. No passing your recording between PCs, emails, employees, etc.
• Secure encrypted communications (https) with and between our servers.
• Recordings are automatically deleted from our servers as soon as the transcription is done.
• Our contract with Google / Microsoft (our speech engines providers) prohibits them from keeping any audio or results.
• Transcription results are securely kept on our secure database. Only you have access to them - only if you sign in (or provide your secret credentials through the API)
• You may choose to delete the transcription results - once you do - no copy remains on our servers.

- Dictation notepad & extension

For dictation, the recording & recognition - is delegated to and done by the browser (Chrome / Edge) or operating system (Android). So, we never even have access to the recorded audio, and Edge's / Chrome's / Android's (depending the one you use) privacy policy apply here.

The results of the dictation are saved locally on your machine - via the browser's / app's local storage. It never gets to our servers. So, as long as your device is private - your notes are private.

Payments method privacy

The whole payments process is delegated to PayPal / Stripe / Google Pay / Play Store / App Store and secured by these providers. We never receive any of your credit card information.

More generic notes regarding our site, cookies, analytics, ads, etc.

• We may use Google Analytics on our site - which is a generic tool to track usage statistics.
• We use cookies - which means we save data on your browser to send to our servers when needed. This is used for instance to sign you in, and then keep you signed in.
• For the dictation tool - we use your browser's local storage to store your notes, so you can access them later.
• Non premium dictation tool serves ads by Google. Users may opt out of personalized advertising by visiting Ads Settings . Alternatively, users can opt out of a third-party vendor's use of cookies for personalized advertising by visiting https://youradchoices.com/
• In case you would like to upload files to Google Drive directly from Speechnotes - we'll ask for your permission to do so. We will use that permission for that purpose only - syncing your speech-notes to your Google Drive, per your request.

SpeechTexter is a free multilingual speech-to-text application aimed at assisting you with transcription of notes, documents, books, reports or blog posts by using your voice. This app also features a customizable voice commands list, allowing users to add punctuation marks, frequently used phrases, and some app actions (undo, redo, make a new paragraph).

SpeechTexter is used daily by students, teachers, writers, bloggers around the world.

It will assist you in minimizing your writing efforts significantly.

Voice-to-text software is exceptionally valuable for people who have difficulty using their hands due to trauma, people with dyslexia or disabilities that limit the use of conventional input devices. Speech to text technology can also be used to improve accessibility for those with hearing impairments, as it can convert speech into text.

It can also be used as a tool for learning a proper pronunciation of words in the foreign language, in addition to helping a person develop fluency with their speaking skills.

Accuracy levels higher than 90% should be expected. It varies depending on the language and the speaker.

No download, installation or registration is required. Just click the microphone button and start dictating.

Speech to text technology is quickly becoming an essential tool for those looking to save time and increase their productivity.

Powerful real-time continuous speech recognition

Creation of text notes, emails, blog posts, reports and more.

Custom voice commands

More than 70 languages supported

SpeechTexter is using Google Speech recognition to convert the speech into text in real-time. This technology is supported by Chrome browser (for desktop) and some browsers on Android OS. Other browsers have not implemented speech recognition yet.

Note: iPhones and iPads are not supported

List of supported languages:

Afrikaans, Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Basque, Bengali, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Burmese, Catalan, Chinese (Mandarin, Cantonese), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Galician, Georgian, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Javanese, Kannada, Kazakh, Khmer, Kinyarwanda, Korean, Lao, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Malay, Malayalam, Marathi, Mongolian, Nepali, Norwegian Bokmål, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Sinhala, Slovak, Slovenian, Southern Sotho, Spanish, Sundanese, Swahili, Swati, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Tsonga, Tswana, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uzbek, Venda, Vietnamese, Xhosa, Zulu.

Instructions for web app on desktop (Windows, Mac, Linux OS)

Requirements: the latest version of the Google Chrome [↗] browser (other browsers are not supported).

1. Connect a high-quality microphone to your computer.

2. Make sure your microphone is set as the default recording device on your browser.

To go directly to microphone's settings paste the line below into Chrome's URL bar.

chrome://settings/content/microphone

To capture speech from video/audio content on the web or from a file stored on your device, select 'Stereo Mix' as the default audio input.

3. Select the language you would like to speak (Click the button on the top right corner).

4. Click the "microphone" button. Chrome browser will request your permission to access your microphone. Choose "allow".

5. You can start dictating!

Instructions for the web app on a mobile and for the android app

Requirements: - Google app [↗] installed on your Android device. - Any of the supported browsers if you choose to use the web app.

Supported android browsers (not a full list): Chrome browser (recommended), Edge, Opera, Brave, Vivaldi.

1. Tap the button with the language name (on a web app) or language code (on android app) on the top right corner to select your language.

2. Tap the microphone button. The SpeechTexter app will ask for permission to record audio. Choose 'allow' to enable microphone access.

3. You can start dictating!

Common problems on a desktop (Windows, Mac, Linux OS)

Error: 'speechtexter cannot access your microphone'..

Please give permission to access your microphone.

Click on the "padlock" icon next to the URL bar, find the "microphone" option, and choose "allow".

Error: 'No speech was detected. Please try again'.

If you get this error while you are speaking, make sure your microphone is set as the default recording device on your browser [see step 2].

If you're using a headset, make sure the mute switch on the cord is off.

Error: 'Network error'

The internet connection is poor. Please try again later.

The result won't transfer to the "editor".

The result confidence is not high enough or there is a background noise. An accumulation of long text in the buffer can also make the engine stop responding, please make some pauses in the speech.

The results are wrong.

Please speak loudly and clearly. Speaking clearly and consistently will help the software accurately recognize your words.

Reduce background noise. Background noise from fans, air conditioners, refrigerators, etc. can drop the accuracy significantly. Try to reduce background noise as much as possible.

Speak directly into the microphone. Speaking directly into the microphone enhances the accuracy of the software. Avoid speaking too far away from the microphone.

Speak in complete sentences. Speaking in complete sentences will help the software better recognize the context of your words.

Can I upload an audio file and get the transcription?

No, this feature is not available.

How do I transcribe an audio (video) file on my PC or from the web?

Playback your file in any player and hit the 'mic' button on the SpeechTexter website to start capturing the speech. For better results select "Stereo Mix" as the default recording device on your browser, if you are accessing SpeechTexter and the file from the same device.

I don't see the "Stereo mix" option (Windows OS)

"Stereo Mix" might be hidden or it's not supported by your system. If you are a Windows user go to 'Control panel' → Hardware and Sound → Sound → 'Recording' tab. Right-click on a blank area in the pane and make sure both "View Disabled Devices" and "View Disconnected Devices" options are checked. If "Stereo Mix" appears, you can enable it by right clicking on it and choosing 'enable'. If "Stereo Mix" hasn't appeared, it means it's not supported by your system. You can try using a third-party program such as "Virtual Audio Cable" or "VB-Audio Virtual Cable" to create a virtual audio device that includes "Stereo Mix" functionality.

How to use the voice commands list?

The voice commands list allows you to insert the punctuation, some text, or run some preset functions (#newparagraph, #undo, #redo) using only your voice. On the first column you enter your voice command. On the second column you enter a punctuation mark or a function. Voice commands are case-sensitive. Available functions: #newparagraph (insert new paragraph), #undo (undo the last change), #redo (redo the last change)

To use the function above make a pause in your speech until all previous dictated speech appears in your note, then say "insert a new paragraph" and wait for the command execution.

Found a mistake in the voice commands list or want to suggest an update? Follow the steps below:

• Navigate to the voice commands list [↑] on this website.
• Click on the edit button to update or add new punctuation marks you think other users might find useful in your language.
• Click on the "Export" button located above the voice commands list to save your list in JSON format to your device.

Next, send us your file as an attachment via email. You can find the email address at the bottom of the page. Feel free to include a brief description of the mistake or the updates you're suggesting in the email body.

Your contribution to the improvement of the services is appreciated.

Can I prevent my custom voice commands from disappearing after closing the browser?

SpeechTexter by default saves your data inside your browser's cache. If your browsers clears the cache your data will be deleted. However, you can export your custom voice commands to your device and import them when you need them by clicking the corresponding buttons above the list. SpeechTexter is using JSON format to store your voice commands. You can create a .txt file in this format on your device and then import it into SpeechTexter. An example of JSON format is shown below:

{ "period": ".", "full stop": ".", "question mark": "?", "new paragraph": "#newparagraph" }

I lost my dictated work after closing the browser.

SpeechTexter doesn't store any text that you dictate. Please use the "autosave" option or click the "download" button (recommended). The "autosave" option will try to store your work inside your browser's cache, where it will remain until you switch the "text autosave" option off, clear the cache manually, or if your browser clears the cache on exit.

Common problems on the Android app

I get the message: 'speech recognition is not available'..

'Google app' from Play store is required for SpeechTexter to work. download [↗]

Where does SpeechTexter store the saved files?

Version 1.5 and above stores the files in the internal memory.

Version 1.4.9 and below stores the files inside the "SpeechTexter" folder at the root directory of your device.

After updating the app from version 1.x.x to version 2.x.x my files have disappeared

As a result of recent updates, the Android operating system has implemented restrictions that prevent users from accessing folders within the Android root directory, including SpeechTexter's folder. However, your old files can still be imported manually by selecting the "import" button within the Speechtexter application.

Common problems on the mobile web app

Tap on the "padlock" icon next to the URL bar, find the "microphone" option and choose "allow".

• TERMS OF USE
• PRIVACY POLICY
• Play Store [↗]

copyright © 2014 - 2024 www.speechtexter.com . All Rights Reserved.

Speech to Text Converter

Descript instantly turns speech into text in real time. Just start recording and watch our AI speech recognition transcribe your voice—with 95% accuracy—into text that’s ready to edit or export.

How to automatically convert speech to text with Descript

Create a project in Descript, select record, and choose your microphone input to start a recording session. Or upload a voice file to convert the audio to text.

As you speak into your mic, Descript’s speech-to-text software turns what you say into text in real time. Don’t worry about filler words or mistakes; Descript makes it easy to find and remove those from both the generated text and recorded audio.

Enter Correct mode (press the C key) to edit, apply formatting, highlight sections, and leave comments on your speech-to-text transcript. Filler words will be highlighted, which you can remove by right clicking to remove some or all instances. When ready, export your text as HTML, Markdown, Plain text, Word file, or Rich Text format.

Download the app for free

More articles and resources.

New: Free Overdub on all Descript accounts, with easier voice cloning

What is a video crossfade effect?

New one-click integrations with Riverside, SquadCast, Restream, Captivate

Other tools from descript, youtube transcript generator, article to video, youtube description generator, split-screen video editor, social media video maker, video to text converter, podcast description generator, video to gif converter, video clip maker.

Speech to Text

• 3 Create a new project Drag your file into the box above, or click Select file and import it from your computer or wherever it lives.

Expand Descript’s online voice recognition powers with an expandable transcription glossary to recognize hard-to-translate words like names and jargon.

Record yourself talking and turn it into text, audio, and video that’s ready to edit in Descript’s timeline. You can format, search, highlight, and other actions you’d perform in a Google Doc, while taking advantage of features like  text-to-speec h, captions, and more.

Go from speech to text in over 22 different languages, plus English. Transcribe audio in  French ,  Spanish , Italian, German and other languages from around the world. Finnish? Oh we’re just getting started.

Yes, basic real-time speech to text conversion is included for free with most modern devices (Android, Mac, etc.) Descript also offers a 95% accurate text-to-speech converter for up to 1 hour per month for free.

Speech-to-text conversion works by using AI and large quantities of diverse training data to recognize the acoustic qualities of specific words, despite the different speech patterns and accents people have, to generate it as text.

Yes! Descript‘s AI-powered Overdub feature lets you not only turn speech to text but also generate human-sounding speech from a script in your choice of AI stock voices.

Descript supports speech-to-text conversion in Catalan, Finnish, Lithuanian, Slovak, Croatian, French (FR), Malay, Slovenian, Czech, German, Norwegian, Spanish (US), Danish, Hungarian, Polish, Swedish, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese (BR), Turkish.

Descript’s included AI transcription offers up to 95% accurate speech to text generation. We also offer a white glove pay-per-word transcription service and 99% accuracy. Expanding your transcription glossary makes the automatic transcription more accurate over time.

Audio to Text

Transcribe audio to text automatically, using AI. Over +120 languages supported

Accurate audio transcriptions with AI

Effortlessly convert spoken words into written text with unmatched accuracy using VEED’s AI audio-to-text technology. Get instant transcriptions for your podcasts, interviews, lectures, meetings, and all types of business communications. Say goodbye to manually transcribing your audio and embrace efficiency. Our advanced algorithms use machine learning to ensure contextually relevant transcripts, even for complex recordings.

With customizable options and quick turnaround, you have full control over the transcription process. Join countless professionals who rely on VEED to streamline their work, making every spoken word accessible and searchable. Our text converter also features a built-in video and audio editor to help you achieve a crisp, studio-quality sound for your recordings. Increase your productivity to new heights!

How to transcribe audio to text:

Upload or record

Upload your audio or video to VEED or record one using our online audio recorder .

Auto-transcribe and translate

Auto-transcribe your video from the Subtitles menu. You can also translate your transcript to over 120 languages. Select a language and translate the transcript instantly.

Review and export

Review and edit the transcription if necessary. Just click on a line of text and start typing. Download your transcript in VTT, SRT, or TXT format.

Learn more about our audio-to-text tool in this video:

Instant transcription downloads for better documentation

VEED uses cutting-edge technology to transcribe your audio to text at lightning-fast speed. Download your transcript in one click and keep track of your records better—without paying for expensive transcription services. Get a written copy of your recordings instantly and one proofread for 100% accuracy. Downloading transcriptions is available to premium subscribers. Check our pricing page for more info.

Transcribe videos to bump your content in search results

Our audio-to-text tool is part of a robust and powerful video editing software that also lets you edit and transcribe your video content. Transcribe your video and add captions to help your content rank higher in search engine results. Drive traffic to your website, increase engagement in your social media pages, and grow your channel. Animate your captions and captivate viewers in just a few clicks!

Convert audio to text and create globally accessible content

VEED can help your brand create content that caters to a diverse audience. With automatic transcriptions and instant translations , you can publish globally accessible and inclusive content. Translate your audio and video transcriptions to over 100 languages. Reach untapped markets and help your business grow with instant, reliable, and affordable transcriptions.

Frequently Asked Questions

VEED lets you automatically transcribe your audio to text at lightning-fast speed! Upload your audio file to VEED and click on the Subtitles tool on the left menu. Upload your audio file to VEED and auto-transcribe from the Subtitles menu. Download your transcript in VTT, TXT, or SRT format!

Yes, you can! Upload your video file to VEED and our software will transcribe the original audio that was recorded in your video with the help of AI.

Absolutely! When you’re done downloading the TXT, VTT, or SRT file, click on ‘Export’ to download the video with the subtitles on it. Your video will be exported as an MP4 file.

Depending on how the speech or recording is spaced out through the video, VEED will separate the transcriptions into different boxes. Just click on each box and start typing or editing the text.

Yes—but only the subtitles appearing on the video and not the TXT file. You can choose from a wide range of fonts and styles. Change its size, color, and opacity.

VEED features a 98.5% accuracy in automatic transcriptions and translations with the help of AI. Transcribe your audio to text and translate them to over 100 languages instantly without sacrificing quality.

Discover more:

• Assamese Speech to Text
• Audio Transcription
• Bengali Speech to Text
• Cantonese Speech to Text
• Chinese Speech to Text
• Dictation Transcription
• German Speech to Text
• Japanese Speech to Text
• Kannada Speech to Text
• Korean Speech to Text
• M4A to Text
• MP3 to Text
• Music Transcription
• Sinhala Speech to Text
• Speech to Text Arabic
• Speech to Text Bulgarian
• Speech to Text Danish
• Speech to Text Dutch
• Speech to Text Finnish
• Speech to Text in Marathi
• Speech to Text Italian
• Speech to Text Portuguese
• Speech to Text Russian
• Speech to Text Serbian
• Speech to Text Slovak
• Speech to Text Swedish
• Speech to Text Thai
• Speech to Text Turkish
• Speech to Text Vietnamese
• Tamil Audio to Text
• Telugu Audio to Text Converter
• Transcribe Recordings to Text
• Verbatim Transcription
• Voice Memo Transcription
• Voice Message to Text
• WAV to Text

What they say about VEED

Veed is a great piece of browser software with the best team I've ever seen. Veed allows for subtitling, editing, effect/text encoding, and many more advanced features that other editors just can't compete with. The free version is wonderful, but the Pro version is beyond perfect. Keep in mind that this a browser editor we're talking about and the level of quality that Veed allows is stunning and a complete game changer at worst.

I love using VEED as the speech to subtitles transcription is the most accurate I've seen on the market. It has enabled me to edit my videos in just a few minutes and bring my video content to the next level

Laura Haleydt - Brand Marketing Manager, Carlsberg Importers

The Best & Most Easy to Use Simple Video Editing Software! I had tried tons of other online editors on the market and been disappointed. With VEED I haven't experienced any issues with the videos I create on there. It has everything I need in one place such as the progress bar for my 1-minute clips, auto transcriptions for all my video content, and custom fonts for consistency in my visual branding.

Diana B - Social Media Strategist, Self Employed

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Convert audio to text, translate to multiple languages, and more!

VEED is a comprehensive and incredibly easy-to-use video editing software that allows you to do so much more than just transcribe audio to text. Apart from transcribing an audio file, you can transcribe the original recording of a video. Add subtitles to your videos to make them more accessible for everyone. It also has all the video editing tools you need. All tools are accessible online so you don’t need to install any software. Try VEED today and start creating professional-quality, globally accessible content!

Google Chrome Required

Please open dictation.io inside Google Chrome to use speech recognition.

Cannot Access Microphone

Please follow this guide for instructions on how to unblock your microphone.

Dictation is now publishing your note online. Please wait..

Speed is the rate at which the selected voice will speak your transcribed text while the pitch governs how high or low the voice speaks.

Speak Reset

Transcribe Speech to Text

Convert audio and video to text and subtitles rapidly with remarkable accuracy. Access transcripts in docx, pdf, txt, and srt subtitle formats. 58 languages supported.

Transcribe Speech to Text with Notta AI in Fast Speed

Notta offers an online tool for quick and accurate transcriptions of speech and various audio formats. No software download required. Simply upload your audio file, and Notta's AI-powered software generates an accurate transcription in your chosen language. Download the transcription in SRT, WORD, or TXT formats, and even add subtitles or make edits as needed.

How to Convert Speech to Text

1. Upload audio or video

Upload your audio file by clicking on 'Import Files". Select the transcription language first, drag or click "Select documents'' to import your files. We support WAV, MP3, M4A, CAF, AIFF audio formats. You can upload your files via Notta Web - it's all online, so there is no software to install. In addition, if you want to transcribe YouTube videos, copy and paste the URL, then click "Upload" to turn voice notes to text.

2. Get your transcript in seconds

Once the meeting owner admits Notta Bot to the meeting, Notta will automatically start recording and transcribing. You can find the transcripts on Notta’s dashboard. Click the record to open the transcript, edit the text, add notes or highlight important information.

3. Export and Share

Click "Export," select the text format, e.g., TXT, DOCX, SRT, PDF. You can export the audio as well. You can also share recordings and transcripts with your colleagues or clients with a link to keep everyone in the loop — they don't even have to register a Notta account! Click the "Share" button to get a unique URL to share with others.

Capture and Condense Content with Notta

Real-Time Automatic Transcription

Live transcription of recordings, meetings and calls with 98.86% accuracy.

View and edit your transcripts anytime, anywhere.

Download polished transcript within minutes in common formats.

Language Translation

Transcripts translated into up to 42 languages.

Download your translated text in popular formats for efficient work.

Ensure global inclusion with accessible minutes in local languages.

Generate a high-level overview to quickly get up to speed

Generate summaries in three structured layouts: AI summary, chapter and action items.

Easily share your summary with teammates.

Why Choose Notta?

Various options.

Real-time live transcription allows you to quickly start recording essential conversations with your phone. Notta also supports transcribing Zoom/Google Meet/Microsoft Teams/Webex meetings. Uploading files is another standard option to transcribe downloaded audio content such as podcasts, webinars, online lectures.

Seamless Workflow

With a Notta account, you can log in to Notta Web and Notta mobile app simultaneously. Transcription will synchronize automatically between PCs, phones, and tablets.

Multiple Formats

Notta supports most of the audio formats such as WAV, MP3, M4A, CAF, and AIFF, and video formats such as AVI, RMVB, FLV, MP4, MOV, and WMV. Our online audio converter tool can also convert audio formats.

High Accuracy

Notta is a simple yet powerful tool that lets you have high quality conversations without worrying about the accuracy of the transcription. Our transcriptions have a 98.86% accuracy rate.

Security & Privacy

Notta complies with many safety regulations, including SSL, GDPR, APPI, and CCPA. Rest assured your data is encrypted with AWS's RDP and S3 services to achieve absolute security.

Lightning Speed

Transcription of 1 hours of interviews takes only 5 minutes, saving significant transcription time.

Frequently Asked Question

How can I convert speech to text?

Notta is an AI-powered voice-to-text transcription service that supports 58 languages. In addition to real-time transcription, you can also upload audio or video files to get automated transcripts.

We know how precious your time is, and we want to help you get things done so you can focus on what's important.

Is there an app that converts voice recording to text free?

Try Notta for free now! You can download the Notta mobile app from the Apple app store or Google Play and apply for a 3-day Free Trial with your Google account or Apple ID. You can enjoy all the Pro features for free for three days. Notice that you need to add a payment method before you start a free trial. Don't worry. You won't be charged at this point.

After you sign up for the 3-day Free Trial, you will enjoy the following services

1,800 minutes of transcription time

Live transcription for meetings on Zoom/Google Meet/Microsoft Teams/Webex.

Import audio/video files to Notta to generate high-quality transcripts in just a few minutes.

Export transcripts to multiple formats, e.g., TXT, DOCX, SRT, PDF.

Notta can translate the transcript into up to 42 languages, including Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, Italian, etc.

Can I transcribe using my phone?

Absolutely. Notta mobile app helps you transcribe audio to text at any time and on any occasion with your phone. You can start a real time transcription, or upload audio and video files from local storage to generate text in a few minutes.

Is speech to text accurate?

Automatic transcription powered by AI can now be right on point most of the time. We offer the most accurate transcription for webinars, meetings, interviews, lectures, and other long conversations than other transcription services in its price range. In a quiet environment, Notta transcription has an accuracy of 98.86%.

How to increase voice to text accuracy?

The accuracy of transcription varies depending on the sound quality of the recordings. We recommend keeping the distance between the microphone and the speaker as close as possible, speaking clearly and naturally at your familiar conversation tone and pace, and avoiding or reducing background noise. We recommend you to: 

Keep the distance between the microphone and the speaker as close as possible. 

Speak clearly and naturally at your familiar conversational tone and pace. 

Avoid or reduce background noise.

What Our Users Say

Albert Reynolds

I've tried quite a few speech-to-text apps, and this one is the best I've come across. I'm a professional writer, so my transcripts must be accurate. Even though I don't have a good accent and make a few mistakes while dictating, I'm impressed with Notta's accuracy.

More from Notta

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Fast and Accurate Audio Transcription with Notta

Experience the convenience and efficiency of Notta's online tool for quick and accurate audio transcriptions. Simply upload your audio file, choose your language, and receive an accurate transcription in minutes. Download in SRT, WORD, or TXT formats, and customize with subtitles or edits. Revolutionize your workflow and save time with Notta's AI-powered transcription tool.

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Transcribe any Voice Audio Video To Text

Get accurate transcriptions for your AUDIO & VIDEO with the latest speech rocognition technology.

(based on 425 reviews)

Why you will choose VOICETAPP?

A powerful cloud based artificial intelligence software that help you automatically convert audio to text with up to 100% accuracy..

+170 Languages & Dialects

convert speech to text quickly and accurately with over +170 languages & dialects .

Speaker Identification

Speaker Identification Feature allows you to identify up to 5 speakers in the audio.

Live Transcribe Service

Our enhanced live transcribe feature allow you to use 12 languages to transcribe audios in real time.

Multiple Input Formats

We support multiple Audio Input Formats & sizes : MP3 - OGG - WAV - WEBM - MP4 - FLAC .

Voicetapp have a super clean & easy to use dashboard, to make users very confortable while using it.

Auto Speech Recognition

Voicetapp use a deep learning process called automatic speech recognition (ASR), provided by AWS and GCP.

High Accuracy

Thanks to deep learning tecknology supported by A.I, we can guarantee up to 100% accuracy rates.

What is special about Voicetapp?

We have some awesome funfacts for clients.

Hours Transcribed

Active users

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You can use Voicetapp in different ways!

Turn your favorite podcast into well written text.

Video to text

Youtube, Dailymotions, Local videos (mp4, Mpeg,..).

Subtitle generation

Generate a high accuracy subtitles for any video.

Conference calls

Turn your meeting recordings into hardcopy transcriptions.

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Transcribe creative brainstorming and use it in future promotions.

Transcribe Live voices instantly

Voicetapp combine A.I & ASR technology to provide live transcription for 12+ languages.

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Voicetapp can easily detect & identify punctuation.

Our enhanced ASR engine, powered by its detection and interpretation capabilities, can automatically identify punctuation.

With our speech to text technology we are changing the way people do their businesses.

Learn about Voicetapp from FAQ!

Our support team is always ready to help you, if you have any question please contact us : [email protected]

Our best pricing offer!

• 8 Hours of Transcriptions
• Up to 170+ Languages/Accents
• 12 Languages for Live Transcribe
• up to 5 Speaker Identification
• Multiple Audio Input Formats
• Up to 1 Gb per Audio File Size
• Up to 120 Min per Audio length
• 20 Hours of Transcription
• Up to 2 GB per Audio File Size
• Up to 180 Min per Audio length
• 40 Hours of Transcription
• Up to 230 Min per Audio length

Reviews from happy users.

Don’t take our word for it, Our customers can tell you.

Voicetapp is an amazing software that i found to take notes from live and recorded conferences.

After using a lot of softwares to extract text from audios, I finally find Voicetapp, it really helped me a lot.

This is piece of gold, with the 170 languages available on Voicetapp, the sky is the limit.

The live transcription is just amazing, I can take notes and focus on the speacker at the same time.

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Speech to Text & transcription software

Start Dictation

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Save as .txt

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Accurate transcription of your audio or video file thanks to our transcription software.

Get accurate audio transcription or video transcription of your files thanks to our online automatic transcription service. Sign up now to unlock your free credit!

Free online speech to text : type with your voice.

Have you ever thought to use your voice to transcribe everything you want to be typed out? You can do it with our free speech to text online tool.

Click on start dictation and allow our voice to text software to use your microphone. Start to dictate what you want to say. Watch as the online voice transcription offers live transcribing of your message.

How can you use our free speech to text online software?

• Click on Start Dictation.
• Allow our Speech to Text software to use your microphone.
• Start dictating.

Recording can also be initiated with keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Alt+D. Doesn’t work for you? Make sure you are using Google Chrome browser.

Why should you use our free speech to text online software?

It’s quick, it’s simple and it’s totally free. Our speech to text / speech recognition software makes it easier than ever to turn your voice and diction into typed-out transcriptions. Our functional software allows you the chance to start dictation, save your transcription as a text, save your voice transcription as a word document, print your transcription, send by email, and more.

Using our transcription and voice to text recognition tool, you can dictate a text and see it typed out all.

Which features does this online voice to text software offer?

This talk to text feature provides a clear transcript, allows you to save text, and acts as a voice transcription. This tool is free and online so you can access it from anywhere, it recognizes key voice commands. It provides perfect functionality for professionals, teachers, students and more for high-quality voice typing online to increase productivity.

• Free and online
• No downloads, installation, or registration
• Supports Multi-language
• You can pause or stop dictation and our software will pause where you left off and hold your place
• Recognizes voice commands for inserting punctuation: for example, say "Comma" and it will type ","
• Smart capitalization
• You can save, copy, print, or send the dictated text
• You can use it on your computer, tablet or mobile device

What are the benefits of voice to text?

Some of the benefits of voice to text might seem obvious, and right off the bat, it’s simple to see why a free voice to text software might be useful. However, this program offers many more benefits that you might not have considered.

With our voice to text tool, you can experience seamless ease of communication, quick document turnaround, and course, flexibility for your work. Why take the time to type out your grand ideas when you can quickly capture them through our voice to text tool?

Ever have a great idea you can’t wait to type out but once you get the chance to type it out, you’ve forgotten the idea? Or further, have you ever constructed a great sentence in your head, but by the time you’ve pulled up a document to type it out, your brain has totally switched up the order? It happens to all of us. But with our speech to text tool, you simply speak into our software and record the idea without lifting a finger! Then, simply print the transcription, save it as a text, or save it as an email or word document

But that’s not all, there’s a long list of benefits that voice to text tools can offer! For example, voice to text software can:

• Help you save time : a speech recognition tool can cut your time in half when compared to typing out something on a document
• Multitask: this is a must for busy individuals
• Make fewer errors: when you type something out, it’s possible to make errors and fail to capture an idea well. With a voice to text converter, you can capture the emotion, message, and grammatically correct transcription straight from your diction.
• Make working and communicating on your smartphone easier than ever: our program works with iPhone, Android, tablets, and more: just open it with Chrome.Guarantee a secure pathway for your information: it goes from our transcription service to the next location you assign (as a text, word document, printed document, etc.).
• Streamline a tedious job.
• Increase and enhance workflow and visibility, allowing for easier management of projects and increased turnarounds.

What exactly is speech recognition?

A speech recognition tool, otherwise called an automatic speech recognition tool, a speech to text software, or online speech recognition tools, are softwares that are designed to offer a live transcription of a live dictation with your voice. These types of tools do not require any typing or physical effort.

They operate solely based on the user’s voice and then offer a typed out or written out version of that dictation. While most speech to text programs work differently than others, typically they offer live, instantaneous speech recognition transcription.

Who uses speech to text also known as voice typing?

Speech recognition tools are a useful addition for most people. In other words, almost anyone who wants to use a speech to text software will easily see the benefits of them almost instantly.

This tool is built to help enhance productivity for professionals who can save time by typing faster notes, taking more efficient and effective meeting notes, creating thorough to-do lists, and dictating on the go.

Many people benefit from using the voice typing and talk to text feature. This is a useful talk to text tool for professionals, teachers and students looking to excel. It can enhance the ability to take accurate class notes, be a true game changer for thesis statement work, enhance vocabulary, and improve just about any type of writing or speaking someone might do.

Dictation is an assistive technology and we are thrilled to help thousands of people around the globe everyday who struggle with writing. This speech recognition tool is helping people facing dysgraphia, dyslexia and other learning and thinking differences that impact writing. Blind or vision impaired people also find it helpful.

Speak to text allows you to write with your voice instead of writing by hand or with a keyboard. Speech to text software is designed to make typing easier than ever by only requiring a voice to transcribe dictation.

Speech to text or voice typer helps those who are interested in keeping their concentration and workflow going without distractions, those who are physically impaired, and those who simply enjoy the convenience of not having to type or write out their thoughts.

Online Dictation vs. Speech to Text Tools : what’s the difference?

Users read or hear about two different types of software or tools known as online dictation and speech to text programs. While these two terms are used interchangeably, many are wondering if there’s a difference between the two. In most cases, this isn’t so. Typically online dictation tools and speech to text tools fall into the same category and do the same things. Other times, however, the difference lies in how that live dictation is accomplished.

With speech to text programs, it’s essentially a guarantee that the program is a tool run by automated intelligence. In other words, there is no live person helping with this dictation. While this is often the case in online dictation tools too, sometimes online dictation can be referred to a real person offering dictation services online.

Speech recognition tool troubleshooting

The following problems might occur:

• The browser doesn't support speech recognition : the latest version of Chrome does. We highly recommend you to use Chrome.
• Hardware problem with the microphone : make sure your computer has detected your microphone.
• Permission for accessing the microphone is not granted. Allow our Speech Recognition tool to have access to your microphone.
• The browser listens to the wrong microphone. To solve microphone permission issues, click on the small camera icon in the browser's address bar (will appear after you click on the start dictation button), and set there the permission to allow the use of microphone, and pick the correct microphone from the dropdown list.

If you have other issues, please contact us describing the problem in detail.

What is speech to text software?

A speech to text software is a speech recognition tool. By listening to your voice, it automatically recognizes what you are saying and simultaneously transcribes it into text. Using a voice recognition software, you can type faster and avoid typographical errors. Voice typing software provides live voice recording to text.

How to turn on speech to text?

To turn on our speech to text software you just need to click on the “Start Dictation” button and allow the program to access your microphone. The speech recognition software will then start listening to what you are dictating and it will start transcribing what you are saying.

How to use speech to text?

One way to use it is to open our free speech to text tool. Simply select the language that you want to be live transcribed and click on “start dictation”. Allow your browser to access your microphone and start dictating. The free voice dictation software will now start recognizing your voice and will simultaneously transcribe the dictation into text.

Is there any software that can convert speech to text?

Yes, our free online speech to text software is one of the applications that can convert speech to text. It's a free automatic tool that can be used without registration. You can use it on your computer, tablet or on your mobile.

What is speech to text technology?

Speech to text technology converts spoken words into text. The conversion from audio to text is done simultaneously and helps you to write quicker and to avoid typing errors and eventual distractions. The audio to text converter is one of the best solutions when you want to make a note of something. You can also use it as a free online voice recorder. No paper and pen is needed, you just need to have access to your favorite device and internet.

How to use voice to text?

Using the voice to text converter is easy, free and without registration.To use our audio to text converter, simply select the language you will speak. To translate voice to text, click on “start dictation” and allow the program to access your microphone. The live transcription will start immediately.

How to do voice to text?

You can turn on voice to text by clicking on the “start dictation” button and by allowing the system to access your microphone. You can then start speaking and the live transcription will start. What you’ll say will automatically be converted into text and it’ll appear on your screen.

What is speech recognition?

Speech recognition is a technology that recognizes your voice and that converts every word that you say into text. This helps you to type quicker and avoid typos. Our speech recognition software can be used by a large set of people as journalists, students, business workers, writers, etc.

How does speech recognition work?

After clicking on the button “start dictation”, the speech recognition system will send the sound recorded by your microphone to an external partner such as Google Text-to-Speech, IBM Watson Speech to Text, Microsoft's speech-to-text or Amazon Transcribe. The partner will then convert your speech into text and will send back the text transcription. This process is happening live, this is why you can see the audio transcription directly on your screen. This is also why you need to be connected to the Internet to use this tool.

How to voice type?

You can voice type by using our free voice-to-text software. There is no need to download or to register any account. You just need to select the language you’ll speak, press the button “start dictation” and allow the site to access your microphone. As soon as it’s done, you will see that the words you’ve just pronounced are automatically typed into text.

How do I turn on voice typing?

Turning on this voice typing software is really easy. You just need to select the language, click on “start dictation” and allow the system to access your microphone. You will not need to download any application, to pay any fee or to register your email. Your transcription is happening live and is totally anonymous.

What does voice typing mean?

Voice typing means that you can type some text by using the sound of your voice instead of using your keyboard. Using your voice instead of your keyboard helps to avoid misspellings and inefficiencies.

How to talk to text?

Talk to text is easy. By finding the right online transcription tool, you can write your text by talking. Our online voice to text software can type what you dictate. Clicking on “Start dictation” and your dictation will be typed live on the screen.

How to turn on talk to text?

Wondering “How do i talk to text” ? By clicking on the button called “start dictation” and by allowing the software to access your microphone, you can turn on the talk to text system. Once these two initial steps have been completed, you can start dictating what you want to type and the system will automatically transcribe your voice into text.

What is live transcribe?

Live transcribe provides you instant captions of what you say. It uses speech recognition technology to turn your voice into text. Our live transcribe system offers you live transcriptions. Your voice is transcribed into text on the spot.

How to use live transcribe?

Two elements are needed to use our live transcription software. You need to have a microphone and an internet connection. Click on “start dictation” to enable the live transcription process. Start talking and the tool will instantly transcribe what you say.

How does speak to text work?

Speak to text tools listen to your voice and automatically transcribe the words that you’ve spoken into words into text. This process is done in real time. It’s free and doesn’t require any registration. To start using the tool, simply click on “Start dictation” button.

Can I convert speech to text?

Yes, you can. Converting speech to text is easy. Turn on our voice to text tool, select the language you’ll speak and start dictating what you want to be written on the screen. You also have the opportunity to add the punctuation just by saying “point” or by saying “comma” for example.

How can I turn on voice to text?

To turn on voice to text just press on the button “start dictation”, allow the system to register and grant access to your microphone. You can then start talking loud. The system will hear what you are saying and automatically write the words on the screen.

How can I type with my voice?

You can type with your voice by opening our voice to text tool. Click on “start dictation”, grant the access to your microphone and you will start transcribing your voice into text.

Is speech to text free?

Our speech to text is free and doesn’t require any registration. You only need to have a good internet connection available and a microphone. You can use Speech to text from anywhere, from your computer, your tablet or your phone.

How to get the transcription of an audio file?

To get the transcription of an audio file, simply sign up to our transcription software AudioScripto.

Once logged in, select the language of your audio file and upload it. A few minutes later, once the audio file has been transcribed, you will be alerted by email that your transcription is ready. You can immediately download the transcription of your audio file.

How to make a transcript of an audio file?

To make a transcript of an audio file simply register to our transcription software AudioScripto.

Select the language of your audio file and upload it. Once the file has been uploaded, the transcription will start. You will receive an email a few minutes later informing you that your audio file has been transcribed and that the transcription is ready.

Who can transcribe audio or video files?

There are several companies that offer transcription services or tools that can transcribe audio or video files into text. It can be done manually or automatically. The choice between both options will depend on your needs.

Is automatic transcription better than human transcription services?

It actually depends on your needs but automatic transcriptions have some advantages vs human transcriptions.

An automatic transcription tool like AudioScripto :

• Is faster than a human : upload your file, wait a few minutes and receive the transcription of your audio or video file,
• Will complete the transcription almost instantly : you are sure that the transcription will be completed within the deadline,
• Is cheaper than human transcriptions,
• Avoid human errors : you avoid the uncertainty of choosing the wrong person for the job.

Despite the fact that human transcription is much slower than automated transcription tools, the quality of the transcription is supposed to be better than the automated transcription. But this depends on the person that is transcribing your audio or video files. Thanks to artificial intelligence and machine learning, the quality of automated transcription gets better every single day!

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How to Use Voice Typing on Google Docs on Mobile and Desktop

While Google Docs is primarily geared toward drafting formal letters, invites, meeting notes, and table of contents , you can also use it to jot down ideas or as a journal. To that end, Google Docs is quite feature-rich and supports features like Voice Typing which makes penning down thoughts more convenient.

The Voice Typing feature eliminates writer’s block by allowing users to jot down rough and unstructured ideas. You don’t have to waste your time thinking of writing perfect sentences – instead, you can just voice your thoughts, scattered as they may be. Here’s how to enable the feature and use it on your mobile and desktop.

Use Voice Typing on Google Docs on Mobile

The Google Docs mobile app lets you manage your documents on the go. The app lets you edit your documents and even save them as PDF files on your iPhone or Android phone. Let us see how you can use the Voice Typing feature with the mobile app.

iPhone users can simply use the Speech-to-Text feature available with the iOS Keyboard to use Google Docs’ Voice Typing feature. Here’s how.

Step 1: Open the Google Docs app and then open a new or previously created document.

Step 2: Tap on the page to bring up the keyboard. Then, tap the Microphone icon at the bottom-right corner.

Step 3: Start dictating the words, and Google Docs will convert the speech to text.

If you don’t see the Microphone icon, check if Voice Dictation has been enabled. Here’s how you can go about it.

Step 1: Open the Settings app and then tap on General.

Step 2: Select Keyboard and tap the toggle next to Enable Dictation.

You can also enable Auto-Punctuation and tweak other aspects from the same menu.

If Dictation still fails to work, refer to our post for more solutions. Note that the solutions outlined in the guide will apply to all iPhones on all iOS versions.

Step 1: Open Google Docs and select a new or previously created document.

Step 2: Tap on the document area to enable the keyboard. Then tap the Microphone icon.

You can refer to our post if Dictation fails to work on your Android phone .

Use Voice Typing on Google Docs on Desktop

For desktop users, the Voice Typing feature comes built-in with Google Docs. However, it is only available for Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge users on Mac and Windows PCs. Here’s how to enable and use it.

Step 1: Open your web browser and go to docs.google.com.

Visit Google Docs

Step 2: Sign in to your account and open a new or existing document.

Step 3: Click on Tools in the top Menu Bar and then select Voice Typing.

Step 4: Select the Microphone icon on the left side. Your browser will then prompt you to enable microphone access. Tap Allow.

You can also click the dropdown menu and select your preferred language.

And voila! You can now start using Voice Dictation on your Mac or Windows PC in Google Docs.

How to Use Punctuation and Formatting Styles With Voice Typing

The best part about voice typing on Google Docs is that you can also dictate and insert punctuation. This saves you the time of manual entry and correction. Once you enable the microphone, you can start voicing commands like “select all”, “bold”, “italics”, and more. There are a plethora of other voice commands available for voice typing. A word of caution, though: your dictated punctuation might not always get translated correctly. So, be patient while using the feature.

Use Microsoft Voice Typing Launcher For Google Docs on Windows 11

Windows 11 has a feature called Voice Typing Launcher (Microsoft Speech Services) that is designed to be used for voice typing. You can activate this feature to use voice typing on Google Docs or any other application. Before following the steps to enable it, make sure that you have installed the latest software update.

Step 1: Open Google Docs on your web browser and sign in to your account.

Step 2: Go to your document and press Windows key + H to enable Microsoft Speech Services.

Step 3: From the popup, click the Microphone icon to start using it.

You can click the Settings icon to make changes, including using a different microphone and enabling automatic punctuation. We tested the same on our end and the service introduced commas and full stops automatically, which is great.

You can also refer to our post if Voice Typing is not working on Windows 11 .

Use Dictation on Mac For Voice Typing on Google Docs

You can also use the Dictation feature on Mac to facilitate Voice Typing. It’s a built-in tool that lets you use speech-to-text in Google Docs. All the voice commands for using punctuation will work with this, too. You can refer to our post to learn how to use Dictation on Mac .

Rest Your Fingers

The Voice Typing option on Google Docs is a much-needed respite from endless typing sessions. The feature can also come in clutch when you need to take note of something while juggling other tasks. Let us know if you found this guide useful in the comments below.

Last updated on 16 March, 2024

The above article may contain affiliate links which help support Guiding Tech. However, it does not affect our editorial integrity. The content remains unbiased and authentic.

DID YOU KNOW

Paurush Chaudhary

Paurush dabbles around iOS and Mac while his close encounters with Android and Windows. Before becoming a writer, he produced videos for brands like Mr. Phone and Digit and worked briefly as a copywriter. In his free time, he satiates his curiosity about streaming platforms and devices like Apple TV and Google TV. On weekends, he is a full-time cinephile trying to reduce his never-ending watchlist, often bumping it longer.

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The best dictation software in 2024

These speech-to-text apps will save you time without sacrificing accuracy..

The early days of dictation software were like your friend that mishears lyrics: lots of enthusiasm but little accuracy. Now, AI is out of Pandora's box, both in the news and in the apps we use, and dictation apps are getting better and better because of it. It's still not 100% perfect, but you'll definitely feel more in control when using your voice to type.

I took to the internet to find the best speech-to-text software out there right now, and after monologuing at length in front of dozens of dictation apps, these are my picks for the best.

The best dictation software

Windows 11 Speech Recognition for free dictation software on Windows

Dragon by Nuance for a customizable dictation app

Google Docs voice typing for dictating in Google Docs

Gboard for a free mobile dictation app

Otter for collaboration

What is dictation software?

When searching for dictation software online, you'll come across a wide range of options. The ones I'm focusing on here are apps or services that you can quickly open, start talking, and see the results on your screen in (near) real-time. This is great for taking quick notes , writing emails without typing, or talking out an entire novel while you walk in your favorite park—because why not.

Beyond these productivity uses, people with disabilities or with carpal tunnel syndrome can use this software to type more easily. It makes technology more accessible to everyone .

If this isn't what you're looking for, here's what else is out there:

AI assistants, such as Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa, and Microsoft's Cortana, can help you interact with each of these ecosystems to send texts, buy products, or schedule events on your calendar.

AI meeting assistants will join your meetings and transcribe everything, generating meeting notes to share with your team.

AI transcription platforms can process your video and audio files into neat text.

Transcription services that use a combination of dictation software, AI, and human proofreaders can achieve above 99% accuracy.

There are also advanced platforms for enterprise, like Amazon Transcribe and Microsoft Azure's speech-to-text services.

What makes a great dictation app?

How we evaluate and test apps.

Our best apps roundups are written by humans who've spent much of their careers using, testing, and writing about software. Unless explicitly stated, we spend dozens of hours researching and testing apps, using each app as it's intended to be used and evaluating it against the criteria we set for the category. We're never paid for placement in our articles from any app or for links to any site—we value the trust readers put in us to offer authentic evaluations of the categories and apps we review. For more details on our process, read the full rundown of how we select apps to feature on the Zapier blog .

Dictation software comes in different shapes and sizes. Some are integrated in products you already use. Others are separate apps that offer a range of extra features. While each can vary in look and feel, here's what I looked for to find the best:

High accuracy. Staying true to what you're saying is the most important feature here. The lowest score on this list is at 92% accuracy.

Ease of use. This isn't a high hurdle, as most options are basic enough that anyone can figure them out in seconds.

Availability of voice commands. These let you add "instructions" while you're dictating, such as adding punctuation, starting a new paragraph, or more complex commands like capitalizing all the words in a sentence.

Availability of the languages supported. Most of the picks here support a decent (or impressive) number of languages.

Versatility. I paid attention to how well the software could adapt to different circumstances, apps, and systems.

I tested these apps by reading a 200-word script containing numbers, compound words, and a few tricky terms. I read the script three times for each app: the accuracy scores are an average of all attempts. Finally, I used the voice commands to delete and format text and to control the app's features where available.

I used my laptop's or smartphone's microphone to test these apps in a quiet room without background noise. For occasional dictation, an equivalent microphone on your own computer or smartphone should do the job well. If you're doing a lot of dictation every day, it's probably worth investing in an external microphone, like the Jabra Evolve .

What about AI?

Before the ChatGPT boom, AI wasn't as hot a keyword, but it already existed. The apps on this list use a combination of technologies that may include AI— machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) in particular. While they could rebrand themselves to keep up with the hype, they may use pipelines or models that aren't as bleeding-edge when compared to what's going on in Hugging Face or under OpenAI Whisper 's hood, for example. 

Also, since this isn't a hot AI software category, these apps may prefer to focus on their core offering and product quality instead, not ride the trendy wave by slapping "AI-powered" on every web page.

Tips for using voice recognition software

Though dictation software is pretty good at recognizing different voices, it's not perfect. Here are some tips to make it work as best as possible.

Speak naturally (with caveats). Dictation apps learn your voice and speech patterns over time. And if you're going to spend any time with them, you want to be comfortable. Speak naturally. If you're not getting 90% accuracy initially, try enunciating more.  

Punctuate. When you dictate, you have to say each period, comma, question mark, and so forth. The software isn't always smart enough to figure it out on its own.

Learn a few commands . Take the time to learn a few simple commands, such as "new line" to enter a line break. There are different commands for composing, editing, and operating your device. Commands may differ from app to app, so learn the ones that apply to the tool you choose.

Know your limits. Especially on mobile devices, some tools have a time limit for how long they can listen—sometimes for as little as 10 seconds. Glance at the screen from time to time to make sure you haven't blown past the mark. 

Practice. It takes time to adjust to voice recognition software, but it gets easier the more you practice. Some of the more sophisticated apps invite you to train by reading passages or doing other short drills. Don't shy away from tutorials, help menus, and on-screen cheat sheets.

The best dictation software at a glance

Best free dictation software for apple devices, apple dictation (ios, ipados, macos).

Look no further than your Mac, iPhone, or iPad for one of the best dictation tools. Apple's built-in dictation feature, powered by Siri (I wouldn't be surprised if the two merged one day), ships as part of Apple's desktop and mobile operating systems. On iOS devices, you use it by pressing the microphone icon on the stock keyboard. On your desktop, you turn it on by going to System Preferences > Keyboard > Dictation , and then use a keyboard shortcut to activate it in your app.

If you want the ability to navigate your Mac with your voice and use dictation, try Voice Control . By default, Voice Control requires the internet to work and has a time limit of about 30 seconds for each smattering of speech. To remove those limits for a Mac, enable Enhanced Dictation, and follow the directions here for your OS (you can also enable it for iPhones and iPads). Enhanced Dictation adds a local file to your device so that you can dictate offline.

You can format and edit your text using simple commands, such as "new paragraph" or "select previous word." Tip: you can view available commands in a small window, like a little cheat sheet, while learning the ropes. Apple also offers a number of advanced commands for things like math, currency, and formatting. 

Apple Dictation price: Included with macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and Apple Watch.

Apple Dictation accuracy: 96%. I tested this on an iPhone SE 3rd Gen using the dictation feature on the keyboard.

Recommendation: For the occasional dictation, I'd recommend the standard Dictation feature available with all Apple systems. But if you need more custom voice features (e.g., medical terms), opt for Voice Control with Enhanced Dictation. You can create and import both custom vocabulary and custom commands and work while offline.

Apple Dictation supported languages: 59 languages and dialects .

While Apple Dictation is available natively on the Apple Watch, if you're serious about recording plenty of voice notes and memos, check out the Just Press Record app. It runs on the same engine and keeps all your recordings synced and organized across your Apple devices.

Best free dictation software for Windows

Windows 11 speech recognition (windows).

Windows 11 Speech Recognition (also known as Voice Typing) is a strong dictation tool, both for writing documents and controlling your Windows PC. Since it's part of your system, you can use it in any app you have installed.

To start, first, check that online speech recognition is on by going to Settings > Time and Language > Speech . To begin dictating, open an app, and on your keyboard, press the Windows logo key + H. A microphone icon and gray box will appear at the top of your screen. Make sure your cursor is in the space where you want to dictate.

When it's ready for your dictation, it will say Listening . You have about 10 seconds to start talking before the microphone turns off. If that happens, just click it again and wait for Listening to pop up. To stop the dictation, click the microphone icon again or say "stop talking."  

As I dictated into a Word document, the gray box reminded me to hang on, we need a moment to catch up . If you're speaking too fast, you'll also notice your transcribed words aren't keeping up. This never posed an issue with accuracy, but it's a nice reminder to keep it slow and steady. 

To activate the computer control features, you'll have to go to Settings > Accessibility > Speech instead. While there, tick on Windows Speech Recognition. This unlocks a range of new voice commands that can fully replace a mouse and keyboard. Your voice becomes the main way of interacting with your system.

While you can use this tool anywhere inside your computer, if you're a Microsoft 365 subscriber, you'll be able to use the dictation features there too. The best app to use it on is, of course, Microsoft Word: it even offers file transcription, so you can upload a WAV or MP3 file and turn it into text. The engine is the same, provided by Microsoft Speech Services.

Windows 11 Speech Recognition price: Included with Windows 11. Also available as part of the Microsoft 365 subscription.

Windows 11 Speech Recognition accuracy: 95%. I tested it in Windows 11 while using Microsoft Word. 

Windows 11 Speech Recognition languages supported : 11 languages and dialects .

Best customizable dictation software

Dragon by nuance (android, ios, macos, windows).

In 1990, Dragon Dictate emerged as the first dictation software. Over three decades later, we have Dragon by Nuance, a leader in the industry and a distant cousin of that first iteration. With a variety of software packages and mobile apps for different use cases (e.g., legal, medical, law enforcement), Dragon can handle specialized industry vocabulary, and it comes with excellent features, such as the ability to transcribe text from an audio file you upload. 

For this test, I used Dragon Anywhere, Nuance's mobile app, as it's the only version—among otherwise expensive packages—available with a free trial. It includes lots of features not found in the others, like Words, which lets you add words that would be difficult to recognize and spell out. For example, in the script, the word "Litmus'" (with the possessive) gave every app trouble. To avoid this, I added it to Words, trained it a few times with my voice, and was then able to transcribe it accurately.

It also provides shortcuts. If you want to shorten your entire address to one word, go to Auto-Text , give it a name ("address"), and type in your address: 1000 Eichhorn St., Davenport, IA 52722, and hit Save . The next time you dictate and say "address," you'll get the entire thing. Press the comment bubble icon to see text commands while you're dictating, or say "What can I say?" and the command menu pops up. 

Once you complete a dictation, you can email, share (e.g., Google Drive, Dropbox), open in Word, or save to Evernote. You can perform these actions manually or by voice command (e.g., "save to Evernote.") Once you name it, it automatically saves in Documents for later review or sharing. 

Accuracy is good and improves with use, showing that you can definitely train your dragon. It's a great choice if you're serious about dictation and plan to use it every day, but may be a bit too much if you're just using it occasionally.

Dragon by Nuance price: $15/month for Dragon Anywhere (iOS and Android); from $200 to $500 for desktop packages

Dragon by Nuance accuracy: 97%. Tested it in the Dragon Anywhere iOS app.

Dragon by Nuance supported languages: 6 languages and dialects in Dragon Anywhere and 8 languages and dialects in Dragon Desktop.  

Best free mobile dictation software

Gboard (android, ios).

Gboard, also known as Google Keyboard, is a free keyboard native to Android phones. It's also available for iOS: go to the App Store, download the Gboard app , and then activate the keyboard in the settings. In addition to typing, it lets you search the web, translate text, or run a quick Google Maps search.

Back to the topic: it has an excellent dictation feature. To start, press the microphone icon on the top-right of the keyboard. An overlay appears on the screen, filling itself with the words you're saying. It's very quick and accurate, which will feel great for fast-talkers but probably intimidating for the more thoughtful among us. If you stop talking for a few seconds, the overlay disappears, and Gboard pastes what it heard into the app you're using. When this happens, tap the microphone icon again to continue talking.

Wherever you can open a keyboard while using your phone, you can have Gboard supporting you there. You can write emails or notes or use any other app with an input field.

The writer who handled the previous update of this list had been using Gboard for seven years, so it had plenty of training data to adapt to his particular enunciation, landing the accuracy at an amazing 98%. I haven't used it much before, so the best I had was 92% overall. It's still a great score. More than that, it's proof of how dictation apps improve the more you use them.

Gboard price : Free

Gboard accuracy: 92%. With training, it can go up to 98%. I tested it using the iOS app while writing a new email.

Gboard supported languages: 916 languages and dialects .

Best dictation software for typing in Google Docs

Google docs voice typing (web on chrome).

Just like Microsoft offers dictation in their Office products, Google does the same for their Workspace suite. The best place to use the voice typing feature is in Google Docs, but you can also dictate speaker notes in Google Slides as a way to prepare for your presentation.

To get started, make sure you're using Chrome and have a Google Docs file open. Go to Tools > Voice typing , and press the microphone icon to start. As you talk, the text will jitter into existence in the document.

You can change the language in the dropdown on top of the microphone icon. If you need help, hover over that icon, and click the ? on the bottom-right. That will show everything from turning on the mic, the voice commands for dictation, and moving around the document.

It's unclear whether Google's voice typing here is connected to the same engine in Gboard. I wasn't able to confirm whether the training data for the mobile keyboard and this tool are connected in any way. Still, the engines feel very similar and turned out the same accuracy at 92%. If you start using it more often, it may adapt to your particular enunciation and be more accurate in the long run.

Google Docs voice typing price : Free

Google Docs voice typing accuracy: 92%. Tested in a new Google Docs file in Chrome.

Google Docs voice typing supported languages: 118 languages and dialects ; voice commands only available in English.

Google Docs integrates with Zapier , which means you can automatically do things like save form entries to Google Docs, create new documents whenever something happens in your other apps, or create project management tasks for each new document.

Best dictation software for collaboration

Otter (web, android, ios).

Most of the time, you're dictating for yourself: your notes, emails, or documents. But there may be situations in which sharing and collaboration is more important. For those moments, Otter is the better option.

It's not as robust in terms of dictation as others on the list, but it compensates with its versatility. It's a meeting assistant, first and foremost, ready to hop on your meetings and transcribe everything it hears. This is great to keep track of what's happening there, making the text available for sharing by generating a link or in the corresponding team workspace.

The reason why it's the best for collaboration is that others can highlight parts of the transcript and leave their comments. It also separates multiple speakers, in case you're recording a conversation, so that's an extra headache-saver if you use dictation software for interviewing people.

When you open the app and click the Record button on the top-right, you can use it as a traditional dictation app. It doesn't support voice commands, but it has decent intuition as to where the commas and periods should go based on the intonation and rhythm of your voice. Once you're done talking, Otter will start processing what you said, extract keywords, and generate action items and notes from the content of the transcription.

If you're going for long recording stretches where you talk about multiple topics, there's an AI chat option, where you can ask Otter questions about the transcript. This is great to summarize the entire talk, extract insights, and get a different angle on everything you said.

Not all meeting assistants offer dictation, so Otter sits here on this fence between software categories, a jack-of-two-trades, quite good at both. If you want something more specialized for meetings, be sure to check out the best AI meeting assistants . But if you want a pure dictation app with plenty of voice commands and great control over the final result, the other options above will serve you better.

Otter price: Free plan available for 300 minutes / month. Pro plan starts at $16.99, adding more collaboration features and monthly minutes.

Otter accuracy: 93% accuracy. I tested it in the web app on my computer.

Otter supported languages: Only American and British English for now.

Is voice dictation for you?

Dictation software isn't for everyone. It will likely take practice learning to "write" out loud because it will feel unnatural. But once you get comfortable with it, you'll be able to write from anywhere on any device without the need for a keyboard. 

And by using any of the apps I listed here, you can feel confident that most of what you dictate will be accurately captured on the screen. 

Related reading:

The best transcription services

Catch typos by making your computer read to you

Why everyone should try the accessibility features on their computer

What is Otter.ai?

The best voice recording apps for iPhone

This article was originally published in April 2016 and has also had contributions from Emily Esposito, Jill Duffy, and Chris Hawkins. The most recent update was in November 2023.

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Miguel Rebelo

Miguel Rebelo is a freelance writer based in London, UK. He loves technology, video games, and huge forests. Track him down at mirebelo.com.

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The best speech-to-text apps make it simple and easy to convert speech into text, for both desktop and mobile devices.

1. Best overall 2. Best for business 3. Best for mobile 4. Best text service 5. Best speech recognition 6. Best virtual assistant 7. Best for cloud 8. Best for Azure 9. Best for batch conversion 10. Best free speech to text apps 11. Best mobile speech to text apps 12. FAQs 13. How we test

Speech-to-text used to be regarded as very niche, specifically serving either people with accessibility needs or for  dictation . However, speech-to-text is moving more and more into the mainstream as office work can now routinely be completed more simply and easily by using voce-recognition software, rather than having to type through members, and speaking aloud for text to be recorded is now quite common.

While the best speech to text software used to be specifically only for desktops, the development of mobile devices and the explosion of easily accessible apps means that transcription can now also be carried out on a  smartphone  or  tablet . 

This has made the best voice to text applications increasingly valuable to users in a range of different environments, from education to business. This is not least because the technology has matured to the level where mistakes in transcriptions are relatively rare, with some services rightly boasting a 99.9% success rate from clear audio.

Even still, this applies mainly to ordinary situations and circumstances, and precludes the use of technical terminology such as required in legal or medical professions. Despite this, digital transcription can still service needs such as basic  note-taking  which can still be easily done using a phone app, simplifying the dictation process.

However, different speech-to-text programs have different levels of ability and complexity, with some using advanced machine learning to constantly correct errors flagged up by users so that they are not repeated. Others are downloadable software which is only as good as its latest update.

Here then are the best in speech-to-text recognition programs, which should be more than capable for most situations and circumstances.

We've also featured the best voice recognition software .

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Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

1. Dragon Anywhere

Our expert review:

Reasons to buy

Reasons to avoid.

Dragon Anywhere is the Nuance mobile product for Android and iOS devices, however this is no ‘lite’ app, but rather offers fully-formed dictation capabilities powered via the cloud. 

So essentially you get the same excellent speech recognition as seen on the desktop software – the only meaningful difference we noticed was a very slight delay in our spoken words appearing on the screen (doubtless due to processing in the cloud). However, note that the app was still responsive enough overall.

It also boasts support for boilerplate chunks of text which can be set up and inserted into a document with a simple command, and these, along with custom vocabularies, are synced across the mobile app and desktop Dragon software. Furthermore, you can share documents across devices via Evernote or cloud services (such as Dropbox).

This isn’t as flexible as the desktop application, however, as dictation is limited to within Dragon Anywhere – you can’t dictate directly in another app (although you can copy over text from the Dragon Anywhere dictation pad to a third-party app). The other caveats are the need for an internet connection for the app to work (due to its cloud-powered nature), and the fact that it’s a subscription offering with no one-off purchase option, which might not be to everyone’s tastes.

Even bearing in mind these limitations, though, it’s a definite boon to have fully-fledged, powerful voice recognition of the same sterling quality as the desktop software, nestling on your phone or tablet for when you’re away from the office.

Nuance Communications offers a 7-day free trial to give the app a try before you commit to a subscription. 

Read our full Dragon Anywhere review .

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2. Dragon Professional

Should you be looking for a business-grade dictation application, your best bet is Dragon Professional. Aimed at pro users, the software provides you with the tools to dictate and edit documents, create spreadsheets, and browse the web using your voice.   

According to Nuance, the solution is capable of taking dictation at an equivalent typing speed of 160 words per minute, with a 99% accuracy rate – and that’s out-of-the-box, before any training is done (whereby the app adapts to your voice and words you commonly use).

As well as creating documents using your voice, you can also import custom word lists. There’s also an additional mobile app that lets you transcribe audio files and send them back to your computer.   

This is a powerful, flexible, and hugely useful tool that is especially good for individuals, such as professionals and freelancers, allowing for typing and document management to be done much more flexibly and easily.

Overall, the interface is easy to use, and if you get stuck at all, you can access a series of help tutorials. And while the software can seem expensive, it's just a one-time fee and compares very favorably with paid-for subscription transcription services.

Also note that Nuance are currently offering 12-months' access to Dragon Anywhere at no extra cost with any purchase of Dragon Home or Dragon Professional Individual.

Read our full Dragon Professional review .

Otter is a cloud-based speech to text program especially aimed for mobile use, such as on a laptop or smartphone. The app provides real-time transcription, allowing you to search, edit, play, and organize as required.

Otter is marketed as an app specifically for meetings, interviews, and lectures, to make it easier to take rich notes. However, it is also built to work with collaboration between teams, and different speakers are assigned different speaker IDs to make it easier to understand transcriptions.

There are three different payment plans, with the basic one being free to use and aside from the features mentioned above also includes keyword summaries and a wordcloud to make it easier to find specific topic mentions. You can also organize and share, import audio and video for transcription, and provides 600 minutes of free service.

The Premium plan also includes advanced and bulk export options, the ability to sync audio from Dropbox, additional playback speeds including the ability to skip silent pauses. The Premium plan also allows for up to 6,000 minutes of speech to text.

The Teams plan also adds two-factor authentication, user management and centralized billing, as well as user statistics, voiceprints, and live captioning.

Read our full Otter review .

Verbit aims to offer a smarter speech to text service, using AI for transcription and captioning. The service is specifically targeted at enterprise and educational establishments.

Verbit uses a mix of speech models, using neural networks and algorithms to reduce background noise, focus on terms as well as differentiate between speakers regardless of accent, as well as incorporate contextual events such as news and company information into recordings.

Although Verbit does offer a live version for transcription and captioning, aiming for a high degree of accuracy, other plans offer human editors to ensure transcriptions are fully accurate, and advertise a four hour turnaround time.

Altogether, while Verbit does offer a direct speech to text service, it’s possibly better thought of as a transcription service, but the focus on enterprise and education, as well as team use, means it earns a place here as an option to consider.

Read our full Verbit review .

5. Speechmatics

Speechmatics offers a machine learning solution to converting speech to text, with its automatic speech recognition solution available to use on existing audio and video files as well as for live use.

Unlike some automated transcription software which can struggle with accents or charge more for them, Speechmatics advertises itself as being able to support all major British accents, regardless of nationality. That way it aims to cope with not just different American and British English accents, but also South African and Jamaican accents.

Speechmatics offers a wider number of speech to text transcription uses than many other providers. Examples include taking call center phone recordings and converting them into searchable text or Word documents. The software also works with video and other media for captioning as well as using keyword triggers for management.

Overall, Speechmatics aims to offer a more flexible and comprehensive speech to text service than a lot of other providers, and the use of automation should keep them price competitive.

Read our full Speechmatics review .

6. Braina Pro

Braina Pro is speech recognition software which is built not just for dictation, but also as an all-round digital assistant to help you achieve various tasks on your PC. It supports dictation to third-party software in not just English but almost 90 different languages, with impressive voice recognition chops.

Beyond that, it’s a virtual assistant that can be instructed to set alarms, search your PC for a file, or search the internet, play an MP3 file, read an ebook aloud, plus you can implement various custom commands.

The Windows program also has a companion Android app which can remotely control your PC, and use the local Wi-Fi network to deliver commands to your computer, so you can spark up a music playlist, for example, wherever you happen to be in the house. Nifty.

There’s a free version of Braina which comes with limited functionality, but includes all the basic PC commands, along with a 7-day trial of the speech recognition which allows you to test out its powers for yourself before you commit to a subscription. Yes, this is another subscription-only product with no option to purchase for a one-off fee. Also note that you need to be online and have Google ’s Chrome browser installed for speech recognition functionality to work.

Read our full Braina Pro review .

7. Amazon Transcribe

Amazon Transcribe is as big cloud-based automatic speech recognition platform developed specifically to convert audio to text for apps. It especially aims to provide a more accurate and comprehensive service than traditional providers, such as being able to cope with low-fi and noisy recordings, such as you might get in a contact center .

Amazon Transcribe uses a deep learning process that automatically adds punctuation and formatting, as well as process with a secure livestream or otherwise transcribe speech to text with batch processing.

As well as offering time stamping for individual words for easy search, it can also identify different speaks and different channels and annotate documents accordingly to account for this.

There are also some nice features for editing and managing transcribed texts, such as vocabulary filtering and replacement words which can be used to keep product names consistent and therefore any following transcription easier to analyze.

Overall, Amazon Transcribe is one of the most powerful platforms out there, though it’s aimed more for the business and enterprise user rather than the individual.

8. Microsoft Azure Speech to Text

Microsoft 's Azure cloud service offers advanced speech recognition as part of the platform's speech services to deliver the Microsoft Azure Speech to Text functionality. 

This feature allows you to simply and easily create text from a variety of audio sources. There are also customization options available to work better with different speech patterns, registers, and even background sounds. You can also modify settings to handle different specialist vocabularies, such as product names, technical information, and place names.

The Microsoft's Azure Speech to Text feature is powered by deep neural network models and allows for real-time audio transcription that can be set up to handle multiple speakers.

As part of the Azure cloud service, you can run Azure Speech to Text in the cloud, on premises, or in edge computing. In terms of pricing, you can run the feature in a free container with a single concurrent request for up to 5 hours of free audio per month.

Read our full Microsoft Azure Speech to Text review .

9. IBM Watson Speech to Text

IBM's Watson Speech to Text works is the third cloud-native solution on this list, with the feature being powered by AI and machine learning as part of IBM's cloud services.

While there is the option to transcribe speech to text in real-time, there is also the option to batch convert audio files and process them through a range of language, audio frequency, and other output options.

You can also tag transcriptions with speaker labels, smart formatting, and timestamps, as well as apply global editing for technical words or phrases, acronyms, and for number use.

As with other cloud services Watson Speech to Text allows for easy deployment both in the cloud and on-premises behind your own firewall to ensure security is maintained.

Read our full Watson Speech to Text review .

1. Google Gboard

If you already have an Android mobile device, then if it's not already installed then download Google Keyboard from the Google Play store and you'll have an instant text-to-speech app. Although it's primarily designed as a keyboard for physical input, it also has a speech input option which is directly available. And because all the power of Google's hardware is behind it, it's a powerful and responsive tool.

If that's not enough then there are additional features. Aside from physical input ones such as swiping, you can also trigger images in your text using voice commands. Additionally, it can also work with Google Translate, and is advertised as providing support for over 60 languages.

Even though Google Keyboard isn't a dedicated transcription tool, as there are no shortcut commands or text editing directly integrated, it does everything you need from a basic transcription tool. And as it's a keyboard, it means should be able to work with any software you can run on your Android smartphone, so you can text edit, save, and export using that. Even better, it's free and there are no adverts to get in the way of you using it.

2. Just Press Record

If you want a dedicated dictation app, it’s worth checking out Just Press Record. It’s a mobile audio recorder that comes with features such as one tap recording, transcription and iCloud syncing across devices. The great thing is that it’s aimed at pretty much anyone and is extremely easy to use. 

When it comes to recording notes, all you have to do is press one button, and you get unlimited recording time. However, the really great thing about this app is that it also offers a powerful transcription service. 

Through it, you can quickly and easily turn speech into searchable text. Once you’ve transcribed a file, you can then edit it from within the app. There’s support for more than 30 languages as well, making it the perfect app if you’re working abroad or with an international team. Another nice feature is punctuation command recognition, ensuring that your transcriptions are free from typos.   

This app is underpinned by cloud technology, meaning you can access notes from any device (which is online). You’re able to share audio and text files to other iOS apps too, and when it comes to organizing them, you can view recordings in a comprehensive file. 

3. Speechnotes

Speechnotes is yet another easy to use dictation app. A useful touch here is that you don’t need to create an account or anything like that; you just open up the app and press on the microphone icon, and you’re off.   

The app is powered by Google voice recognition tech. When you’re recording a note, you can easily dictate punctuation marks through voice commands, or by using the built-in punctuation keyboard. 

To make things even easier, you can quickly add names, signatures, greetings and other frequently used text by using a set of custom keys on the built-in keyboard. There’s automatic capitalization as well, and every change made to a note is saved to the cloud.

When it comes to customizing notes, you can access a plethora of fonts and text sizes. The app is free to download from the Google Play Store , but you can make in-app purchases to access premium features (there's also a browser version for Chrome).   

Read our full Speechnotes review .

4. Transcribe

Marketed as a personal assistant for turning videos and voice memos into text files, Transcribe is a popular dictation app that’s powered by AI. It lets you make high quality transcriptions by just hitting a button.   

The app can transcribe any video or voice memo automatically, while supporting over 80 languages from across the world. While you can easily create notes with Transcribe, you can also import files from services such as Dropbox.

Once you’ve transcribed a file, you can export the raw text to a word processor to edit. The app is free to download, but you’ll have to make an in-app purchase if you want to make the most of these features in the long-term. There is a trial available, but it’s basically just 15 minutes of free transcription time. Transcribe is only available on iOS, though.   

5. Windows Speech Recognition

If you don’t want to pay for speech recognition software, and you’re running Microsoft’s latest desktop OS, then you might be pleased to hear that speech-to-text is built into Windows.

Windows Speech Recognition, as it’s imaginatively named – and note that this is something different to Cortana, which offers basic commands and assistant capabilities – lets you not only execute commands via voice control, but also offers the ability to dictate into documents.

The sort of accuracy you get isn’t comparable with that offered by the likes of Dragon, but then again, you’re paying nothing to use it. It’s also possible to improve the accuracy by training the system by reading text, and giving it access to your documents to better learn your vocabulary. It’s definitely worth indulging in some training, particularly if you intend to use the voice recognition feature a fair bit.

The company has been busy boasting about its advances in terms of voice recognition powered by deep neural networks, especially since windows 10 and now for Windows 11 , and Microsoft is certainly priming us to expect impressive things in the future. The likely end-goal aim is for Cortana to do everything eventually, from voice commands to taking dictation.

Turn on Windows Speech Recognition by heading to the Control Panel (search for it, or right click the Start button and select it), then click on Ease of Access, and you will see the option to ‘start speech recognition’ (you’ll also spot the option to set up a microphone here, if you haven’t already done that).

Aside from what has already been covered above, there are an increasing number of apps available across all mobile devices for working with speech to text, not least because Google's speech recognition technology is available for use. 

iTranslate Translator  is a speech-to-text app for iOS with a difference, in that it focuses on translating voice languages. Not only does it aim to translate different languages you hear into text for your own language, it also works to translate images such as photos you might take of signs in a foreign country and get a translation for them. In that way, iTranslate is a very different app, that takes the idea of speech-to-text in a novel direction, and by all accounts, does it well. 

ListNote Speech-to-Text Notes  is another speech-to-text app that uses Google's speech recognition software, but this time does a more comprehensive job of integrating it with a note-taking program than many other apps. The text notes you record are searchable, and you can import/export with other text applications. Additionally there is a password protection option, which encrypts notes after the first 20 characters so that the beginning of the notes are searchable by you. There's also an organizer feature for your notes, using category or assigned color. The app is free on Android, but includes ads.

Voice Notes  is a simple app that aims to convert speech to text for making notes. This is refreshing, as it mixes Google's speech recognition technology with a simple note-taking app, so there are more features to play with here. You can categorize notes, set reminders, and import/export text accordingly.

SpeechTexter  is another speech-to-text app that aims to do more than just record your voice to a text file. This app is built specifically to work with social media, so that rather than sending messages, emails, Tweets, and similar, you can record your voice directly to the social media sites and send. There are also a number of language packs you can download for offline working if you want to use more than just English, which is handy.

Also consider reading these related software and app guides:

• Best text-to-speech software
• Best transcription services
• Best Bluetooth headsets

Speech-to-text app FAQs

Which speech-to-text app is best for you.

When deciding which speech-to-text app to use, first consider what your actual needs are, as free and budget  options may only provide basic features, so if you need to use advanced tools you may find a paid-for platform is better suited to you. Additionally, higher-end software can usually cater for every need, so do ensure you have a good idea of which features you think you may require from your speech-to-text app.

How we tested the best speech-to-text apps

To test for the best speech-to-text apps we first set up an account with the relevant platform, then we tested the service to see how the software could be used for different purposes and in different situations. The aim was to push each speech-to-text platform to see how useful its basic tools were and also how easy it was to get to grips with any more advanced tools.

Read more on how we test, rate, and review products on TechRadar .

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Brian has over 30 years publishing experience as a writer and editor across a range of computing, technology, and marketing titles. He has been interviewed multiple times for the BBC and been a speaker at international conferences. His specialty on techradar is Software as a Service (SaaS) applications, covering everything from office suites to IT service tools. He is also a science fiction and fantasy author, published as Brian G Turner.

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Dictate your documents in Word

Dictation lets you use speech-to-text to author content in Microsoft 365 with a microphone and reliable internet connection. It's a quick and easy way to get your thoughts out, create drafts or outlines, and capture notes. 

Start speaking to see text appear on the screen.

How to use dictation

Tip:  You can also start dictation with the keyboard shortcut:  ⌥ (Option) + F1.

Learn more about using dictation in Word on the web and mobile

Dictate your documents in Word for the web

Dictate your documents in Word Mobile

What can I say?

In addition to dictating your content, you can speak commands to add punctuation, navigate around the page, and enter special characters.

You can see the commands in any supported language by going to  Available languages . These are the commands for English.

Punctuation

Navigation and selection, creating lists, adding comments, dictation commands, mathematics, emoji/faces, available languages.

Select from the list below to see commands available in each of the supported languages.

• Select your language

Arabic (Bahrain)

Arabic (Egypt)

Arabic (Saudi Arabia)

Croatian (Croatia)

Gujarati (India)

• Hebrew (Israel)
• Hungarian (Hungary)
• Irish (Ireland)

Marathi (India)

• Polish (Poland)
• Romanian (Romania)
• Russian (Russia)
• Slovenian (Slovenia)

Tamil (India)

Telugu (India)

• Thai (Thailand)
• Vietnamese (Vietnam)

More Information

Spoken languages supported.

By default, Dictation is set to your document language in Microsoft 365.

We are actively working to improve these languages and add more locales and languages.

Supported Languages

Chinese (China)

English (Australia)

English (Canada)

English (India)

English (United Kingdom)

English (United States)

French (Canada)

French (France)

German (Germany)

Italian (Italy)

Portuguese (Brazil)

Spanish (Spain)

Spanish (Mexico)

Preview languages *

Chinese (Traditional, Hong Kong)

Chinese (Taiwan)

Dutch (Netherlands)

English (New Zealand)

Norwegian (Bokmål)

Portuguese (Portugal)

Swedish (Sweden)

Turkish (Turkey)

* Preview Languages may have lower accuracy or limited punctuation support.

Dictation settings

Click on the gear icon to see the available settings.

Spoken Language:  View and change languages in the drop-down

Microphone: View and change your microphone

Auto Punctuation:  Toggle the checkmark on or off, if it's available for the language chosen

Profanity filter:  Mask potentially sensitive phrases with ***

Tips for using Dictation

Saying “ delete ” by itself removes the last word or punctuation before the cursor.

Saying “ delete that ” removes the last spoken utterance.

You can bold, italicize, underline, or strikethrough a word or phrase. An example would be dictating “review by tomorrow at 5PM”, then saying “ bold tomorrow ” which would leave you with "review by tomorrow at 5PM"

Try phrases like “ bold last word ” or “ underline last sentence .”

Saying “ add comment look at this tomorrow ” will insert a new comment with the text “Look at this tomorrow” inside it.

Saying “ add comment ” by itself will create a blank comment box you where you can type a comment.

To resume dictation, please use the keyboard shortcut ALT + `  or press the Mic icon in the floating dictation menu.

Markings may appear under words with alternates we may have misheard.

If the marked word is already correct, you can select  Ignore .

This service does not store your audio data or transcribed text.

Your speech utterances will be sent to Microsoft and used only to provide you with text results.

For more information about experiences that analyze your content, see Connected Experiences in Microsoft 365 .

Troubleshooting

Can't find the dictate button.

If you can't see the button to start dictation:

Make sure you're signed in with an active Microsoft 365 subscription

Dictate is not available in Office 2016 or 2019 for Windows without Microsoft 365

Make sure you have Windows 10 or above

Dictate button is grayed out

If you see the dictate button is grayed out

Make sure the note is not in a Read-Only state.

Microphone doesn't have access

If you see "We don’t have access to your microphone":

Make sure no other application or web page is using the microphone and try again

Refresh, click on Dictate, and give permission for the browser to access the microphone

Microphone isn't working

If you see "There is a problem with your microphone" or "We can’t detect your microphone":

Make sure the microphone is plugged in

Test the microphone to make sure it's working

Check the microphone settings in Control Panel

Also see How to set up and test microphones in Windows

On a Surface running Windows 10: Adjust microphone settings

Dictation can't hear you

If you see "Dictation can't hear you" or if nothing appears on the screen as you dictate:

Make sure your microphone is not muted

Adjust the input level of your microphone

Move to a quieter location

If using a built-in mic, consider trying again with a headset or external mic

Accuracy issues or missed words

If you see a lot of incorrect words being output or missed words:

Make sure you're on a fast and reliable internet connection

Avoid or eliminate background noise that may interfere with your voice

Try speaking more deliberately

Check to see if the microphone you are using needs to be upgraded

Need more help?

Want more options.

Explore subscription benefits, browse training courses, learn how to secure your device, and more.

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Microsoft 365 training

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Communities help you ask and answer questions, give feedback, and hear from experts with rich knowledge.

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Voice   Generator

This web app allows you to generate voice audio from text - no login needed, and it's completely free! It uses your browser's built-in voice synthesis technology, and so the voices will differ depending on the browser that you're using. You can download the audio as a file, but note that the downloaded voices may be different to your browser's voices because they are downloaded from an external text-to-speech server. If you don't like the externally-downloaded voice, you can use a recording app on your device to record the "system" or "internal" sound while you're playing the generated voice audio.

Want more voices? You can download the generated audio and then use voicechanger.io to add effects to the voice. For example, you can make the voice sound more robotic, or like a giant ogre, or an evil demon. You can even use it to reverse the generated audio, randomly distort the speed of the voice throughout the audio, add a scary ghost effect, or add an "anonymous hacker" effect to it.

Note: If the list of available text-to-speech voices is small, or all the voices sound the same, then you may need to install text-to-speech voices on your device. Many operating systems (including some versions of Android, for example) only come with one voice by default, and the others need to be downloaded in your device's settings. If you don't know how to install more voices, and you can't find a tutorial online, you can try downloading the audio with the download button instead. As mentioned above, the downloaded audio uses external voices which may be different to your device's local ones.

You're free to use the generated voices for any purpose - no attribution needed. You could use this website as a free voice over generator for narrating your videos in cases where don't want to use your real voice. You can also adjust the pitch of the voice to make it sound younger/older, and you can even adjust the rate/speed of the generated speech, so you can create a fast-talking high-pitched chipmunk voice if you want to.

Note: If you have offline-compatible voices installed on your device (check your system Text-To-Speech settings), then this web app works offline! Find the "add to homescreen" or "install" button in your browser to add a shortcut to this app in your home screen. And note that if you don't have an internet connection, or if for some reason the voice audio download isn't working for you, you can also use a recording app that records your devices "internal" or "system" sound.

Got some feedback? You can share it with me here .

If you like this project check out these: AI Chat , AI Anime Generator , AI Image Generator , and AI Story Generator .

Free Text to Speech (TTS) Online

Try text to speech online and enjoy the best AI voices that sound human. TTS is great for Google Docs, emails, PDFs, any website, and more.

Mr. President

Select Voice

• Recommended

Select Speed

⚡️ 110 % productivity boost.

• Speed Reader
• 4.5x (900 WPM)
• 3.0x (600 WPM)
• 1.5x (300 WPM)
• 1.0x (200 WPM)

Type or paste anything and press play to convert text to speech. Unlock your reading super powers. Speechify can cut your reading time in half!

Choose from 40+ languages

Create a free account to continue

• Convert any text into audio
• 50+ premium voices
• Create your own custom voices
• Added layer of security for your documents
• Save your files
• Faster listening speeds (1.1x & above)
• Automatically skip content (headers, footers, citations etc)
• No limits or ads

Paste Web Link

Paste a web address link to get the contents of a webpage

• Text to Speech

Text to Speech Features

Ditch robotic voices for Speechify’s text to speech that sound very real.

The Best Text to Speech Converter

Listen up to 9x faster with Speechify’s ultra realistic text to speech software that lets you read faster than the average reading speed, without skipping out on the best AI voices.

Listen & Read at the Same Time

With Speechify text highlighting you can choose to just listen, or listen and read at the same time. Easily follow along as words are highlighted – like Karaoke. Listening and reading at the same time increases comprehension.

Convert Text to Studio-Quality Voices

With Speechify’s easy-to-use AI text to speech voices, you can forget about warbly robotic text to speech AI voices. Our accurate human-like AI voices are HD quality and available in 30+ languages and 100+ accents.

Image to Speech

Scan or take a picture of any image and Speechify will read it aloud to you with its cutting-edge OCR technology. Save your images to your library in the cloud and access it anywhere. You can now listen to that note you got from a friend, relative, or other loved one.

Try Text to Speech in these Popular Voices

The most realistic TTS voices only on the best text to speech app.

Gwyneth Paltrow

What is text to speech

Text to speech, also known as TTS, read aloud, or even speech synthesis . It simply means using artificial intelligence to read words aloud be; it from a PDF , email, docs, or any website. There isn’t a voice artist recording phrases or words, or even the entire article. Speech generation is done on-the-fly, in real time, with natural sounding AI voices.

And that’s the beauty of it all. You don’t have to wait. You simply press play and artificial intelligence makes the words come alive instantly, in a very natural sounding voice. You can change voices and accents across multiple languages.

Listen to any article. Easily scan any printed material and convert the image to audio.

Get Text to Speech Today

And begin removing barriers to reading online

I used to hate school because I’d spend hours just trying to read the assignments. Listening has been totally life changing. This app saved my education.

Ana Student with Dyslexia

Speechify has made my editing so much faster and easier when I’m writing. I can hear an error and fix it right away. Now I can’t write without it.

Daniel Writer

Speechify makes reading so much easier. English is my second language and listening while I follow along in a book has seriously improved my skills.

Lou Avid Reader

More text to speech features you’ll love, speechify text to speech online reviews, kate marfori.

Product Manager at The Star Tribune

With Speechify’s API, we can offer our users a new and accessible way to consume our content. We’ve seen that readers who choose to listen to articles with Speechify are on average 20% more engaged than users who choose not to listen.

Susy Botello

Thanks for sharing this.I love this feature. I just tweeted at you on how much I like it. The voice is great and not at all like the text-to-speech I am used to listening to. I am a podcaster and I think this will help a lot of people multitask a bit, especially if they are interrupted with incoming emails or whatever. You can read-along but continue reading if your eyes need to go elsewhere. Hope you keep this. It’s already in other web publications. I also see it in some news sites. So I think it could become a standard that readers expect when they read online. Can I vote twice?

Renato Vargas

I just started using Medium more and I absolutely love this feature. I’ve listened to my own stories and the Al does the inflections just as I would. Many complain that they can’t read their own stories, but let’s be honest. How many stories would go without an audio version if you had to do all of them yourself? I certainly appreciate it. Thanks for this!!

Oh! How cool – I love it 🙂 The voice is surprisingly natural sounding! My eyes took a much appreciated rest for a bit. I’ve been a long time subscriber to Audible on Amazon. I think this is Great 🙂 Thank you!

Paola Rios Schaaf

Super excited about this! We are all spending too much time staring at our screens. Using another sense to take in the great content at Medium is awesome.

Hi Warren, I am one of those small, randomly selected people, and I ABSOLUTELY love this feature. I have consumed more ideas than I ever have on Medium. And also as a non-native English speaker, this is really helping me to improve my pronunciation. Keep this forevermore! Love, Ananya:)

This is the single most important feature you can role out for me. I simply don’t have the time to read all the articles I would like to on Medium. If I could listen to the articles I could consume at least 3X the amount of Medium content I do now.

Andrew Picken

Love this feature Warren. I use it when I’m reading, helps me churn through reading and also stay focused on the article (at a good speed) when my willpower is low! Keeping me more engaged..

I was THRILLED the other day when I saw the audio option. I didn’t know how it got there, but I pressed play, and then I was blown away hearing the words that I wrote being narrated

Neeramitra Reddy

LOVE THISSS. As someone who loves audio almost as much as reading, this is absolute gold

What is text to speech (TTS)?

Text-to-speech goes by a few names. Some refer to it as TTS,  read aloud , or even speech synthesis ; for the more engineered name. Today, it simply means using  artificial intelligence  to read words aloud be; it from a PDF, email, docs, or any website. Instantly turn text into audio. Listen in English, Italian, Portuguese,  Spanish , or more and choose your accent and character to personalize your experience.

How does AI text to speech work?

Beautifully. Speech synthesis works by installing an app like Speechify either on your device or as a browser extension. AI scans the words on the page and  reads it out loud , without any lag. You can change the default voice to a custom voice, change accents, languages, and even increase or decrease the speaking rate.

AI has made significant progress in synthesizing voices. It can pick up on formatted text and change tone accordingly. Gone are the days where the voices sounded  robotic . Speechify is revolutionizing that.

Once you install the TTS mobile app, you can easily convert text to speech from any website within your browser, read aloud your email, and more. If you install it as a  browser extension , you can do just the same on your laptop. The web version is OS agnostic. Mac or Windows, no problem.

What is the text-to-speech service?

A text-to-speech service is a tool, like Speechify text to speech, that transforms your written words into spoken words. Imagine typing out a message and having it read out loud by a digital voice – that’s what TTS services, like Speechify TTS do.

What are the benefits of text to speech?

TTS technology offers many benefits, like helping those with reading difficulties, providing rest for your eyes, multitasking by listening to content, improving pronunciation and language learning, and making content accessible to a wider audience.

How is Speechify TTS better than Murf AI text to speech, Google Voice, or TTSReader?

Speechify TTS stands out by offering a more natural and human-like voice quality, a wider range of customization options, and user-friendly integration across devices. Plus, our dedication to accessibility means that we ensure a seamless and inclusive experience for all users.

Only available on iPhone and iPad

To access our catalog of 100,000+ audiobooks, you need to use an iOS device.

Coming to Android soon...

Join the waitlist

Enter your email and we will notify you as soon as Speechify Audiobooks is available for you.

You’ve been added to the waitlist. We will notify you as soon as Speechify Audiobooks is available for you.

Vocalware's TTS supports SSML tags, which allow you to control the manner in which the text in your app is spoken. Below are a few examples.

Click on a tag below to insert an example in to the text box:

There are many more SSML tags. Listed here are only those tags which are supported by all of our voices. Additional tags may be supported by a subset of our voices, feel free to experiment.

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Speech-to-Text

Speech-to-text technologies allow students to convert their speech into text. These technologies are particularly useful for those with mobility impairments and other disabilities which make it difficult to type or write without the use of an assistive device.

Apple Voice Control

To activate Voice Control on a MacBook, you will need to follow the following steps:

• Choose Apple menu > System Settings (or System Preferences).
• Click Accessibility.
• In Accessibility settings, click Voice Control.
• Turn on Voice Control. If you are turning on Voice Control for the first time, your Mac might complete a one-time download from Apple.

Once Voice Control is enabled, users can dictate speech and use other commands which enable hands free control of an Apple device.

Voice Control recognizes the names of many apps, labels, controls, and other onscreen items, so you can navigate by combining those names with certain commands. Here are some examples:

• Open Pages: “Open Pages.” Then create a new document: “Click New Document.” Then choose one of the letter templates: “Click Letter. Click Classic Letter.” Then save your document: “Save document.”
• Start a new message in Mail: “Click New Message.” Then address it: “John Appleseed.”
• Restart your Mac: “Click Apple menu. Click Restart” (or use the number overlay and say “Click 8”).

For further information about using Apple Voice Control, please visit Apple Support .

Microsoft 365 Dictation

Microsoft 365 Dictation allows users to convert their speech into text. All you need is a microphone, a reliable internet connection, and a Microsoft 365 license (which you may obtain from Yale ITS ).

To enable the Dictation feature in Word, OneNote, and Powerpoint , simply follow these steps:

• Open a new or existing document and go to Home > Dictate.
• Wait for the Dictate button to turn on and start listening.
• Start speaking to see text appear on the screen.
• Tip: On the Mac, you can also start dictation with the keyboard shortcut: ⌥ (Option) + F1.
• Tip: The Auto Punctuation option in Settings (gear icon) allows Word to detect punctuation in certain languages such that you won’t need to explicitly say each punctuation mark.

For further information about how to use this function, please refer to Microsoft’s manual for Using Dictate in Microsoft 365 , which includes voice commands for adding punctuation, formatting, and more.

Google Documents Voice Typing

Google Voice Typing is a fast and effortless way to dictate text. This feature is inbuilt in Google Docs and Slides and can be activated by following these steps:

• Check that your microphone works.
• Open a document in Google Docs with a Chrome browser.
• Click Tools > Voice typing. A microphone box appears.
• When you are ready to speak, click the microphone.
• Speak clearly, at a normal volume and pace. Punctuation will be automatically added (or you can explicitly say them). As long as the microphone icon is red, what you say will be transcribed.
• When you are done, click the microphone again.
• Tip: When speaking multiple sentences in one go, Google will automatically add spaces after the periods and before the start of a new sentence. However, if you dictate sentences separately, the spaces will have to be added manually.

For further information about using Google’s Voice Dictation software, including how to explicitly add punctuation marks, please refer to Google Documents Editors Help .

OpenAI built a voice cloning tool, but you can’t use it… yet

As deepfakes proliferate , OpenAI is refining the tech used to clone voices — but the company insists it’s doing so responsibly.

Today marks the preview debut of OpenAI’s Voice Engine , an expansion of the company’s existing text-to-speech API . Under development for about two years, Voice Engine allows users to upload any 15-second voice sample to generate a synthetic copy of that voice. But there’s no date for public availability yet, giving the company time to respond to how the model is used and abused.

“We want to make sure that everyone feels good about how it’s being deployed — that we understand the landscape of where this tech is dangerous and we have mitigations in place for that,” Jeff Harris, a member of the product staff at OpenAI, told TechCrunch in an interview.

Training the model

The generative AI model powering Voice Engine has been hiding in plain sight for some time, Harris said.

The same model underpins the voice and “read aloud” capabilities in ChatGPT , OpenAI’s AI-powered chatbot, as well as the preset voices available in OpenAI’s text-to-speech API. And Spotify’s been using it since early September to dub podcasts for high-profile hosts like Lex Fridman in different languages.

I asked Harris where the model’s training data came from — a bit of a touchy subject. He would only say that the Voice Engine model was trained on a mix of licensed and publicly available data.

Models like the one powering Voice Engine are trained on an enormous number of examples — in this case, speech recordings — usually sourced from public sites and data sets around the web. Many generative AI vendors see training data as a competitive advantage and thus keep it and info pertaining to it close to the chest. But training data details are also a potential source of IP-related lawsuits, another disincentive to reveal much.

OpenAI is already being   sued over allegations the company violated IP law by training its AI on copyrighted content, including photos, artwork, code, articles and e-books, without providing the creators or owners credit or pay.

OpenAI has licensing agreements in place with some content providers, like Shutterstock and the news publisher Axel Springer , and allows webmasters to block its web crawler from scraping their site for training data. OpenAI also lets artists “opt out” of and remove their work from the data sets that the company uses to train its image-generating models, including its latest DALL-E 3 .

But OpenAI offers no such opt-out scheme for its other products. And in a recent statement to the U.K.’s House of Lords, OpenAI suggested that it’s “impossible” to create useful AI models without copyrighted material, asserting that fair use — the legal doctrine that allows for the use of copyrighted works to make a secondary creation as long as it’s transformative — shields it where it concerns model training.

Synthesizing voice

Surprisingly, Voice Engine isn’t trained or fine-tuned on user data. That’s owing in part to the ephemeral way in which the model — a combination of a diffusion process and transformer — generates speech.

“We take a small audio sample and text and generate realistic speech that matches the original speaker,” said Harris. “The audio that’s used is dropped after the request is complete.”

As he explained it, the model is simultaneously analyzing the speech data it pulls from and the text data meant to be read aloud, generating a matching voice without having to build a custom model per speaker.

It’s not novel tech. A number of startups have delivered voice cloning products for years, from ElevenLabs to Replica Studios to Papercup to Deepdub to Respeecher . So have Big Tech incumbents such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft — the last of which is a major OpenAI’s investor  incidentally.

Harris claimed that OpenAI’s approach delivers overall higher-quality speech.

We also know it will be priced aggressively. Although OpenAI removed Voice Engine’s pricing from the marketing materials it published today, in documents viewed by TechCrunch, Voice Engine is listed as costing $15 per one million characters, or ~162,500 words. That would fit Dickens’ “Oliver Twist” with a little room to spare. (An “HD” quality option costs twice that, but confusingly, an OpenAI spokesperson told TechCrunch that there’s no difference between HD and non-HD voices. Make of that what you will.)

That translates to around 18 hours of audio, making the price somewhat south of $1 per hour. That’s indeed cheaper than what one of the more popular rival vendors, ElevenLabs, charges — $11 for 100,000 characters per month. But it does come at the expense of some customization.

Voice Engine doesn’t offer controls to adjust the tone, pitch or cadence of a voice. In fact, it doesn’t offer any fine-tuning knobs or dials at the moment, although Harris notes that any expressiveness in the 15-second voice sample will carry on through subsequent generations (for example, if you speak in an excited tone, the resulting synthetic voice will sound consistently excited). We’ll see how the quality of the reading compares with other models when they can be compared directly.

Voice talent as commodity

Voice actor salaries on ZipRecruiter range from $12 to $79 per hour — a lot more expensive than Voice Engine, even on the low end (actors with agents will command a much higher price per project). Were it to catch on, OpenAI’s tool could commoditize voice work. So, where does that leave actors?

The talent industry wouldn’t be caught unawares, exactly — it’s been grappling with the existential threat of generative AI for some time. Voice actors are increasingly being asked to sign away rights to their voices so that clients can use AI to generate synthetic versions that could eventually replace them. Voice work — particularly cheap, entry-level work — is at risk of being eliminated in favor of AI-generated speech.

Now, some AI voice platforms are trying to strike a balance.

Replica Studios last year signed a somewhat contentious deal with SAG-AFTRA to create and license copies of the media artist union members’ voices. The organizations said that the arrangement established fair and ethical terms and conditions to ensure performer consent while negotiating terms for uses of synthetic voices in new works, including video games.

The writers’ strike is over; here’s how AI negotiations shook out

ElevenLabs, meanwhile, hosts a marketplace for synthetic voices that allows users to create a voice, verify and share it publicly. When others use a voice, the original creators receive compensation — a set dollar amount per 1,000 characters.

OpenAI will establish no such labor union deals or marketplaces, at least not in the near term, and requires only that users obtain “explicit consent” from the people whose voices are cloned, make “clear disclosures” indicating which voices are AI-generated and agree not to use the voices of minors, deceased people or political figures in their generations.

“How this intersects with the voice actor economy is something that we’re watching closely and really curious about,” Harris said. “I think that there’s going to be a lot of opportunity to sort of scale your reach as a voice actor through this kind of technology. But this is all stuff that we’re going to learn as people actually deploy and play with the tech a little bit.”

Ethics and deepfakes

Voice cloning apps can be — and have been — abused in ways that go well beyond threatening the livelihoods of actors.

The infamous message board 4chan, known for its conspiratorial content,  used ElevenLabs’ platform to share hateful messages mimicking celebrities like Emma Watson. The Verge’s James Vincent was able to tap AI tools to maliciously, quickly clone voices, generating samples containing everything from violent threats to racist and transphobic remarks. And over at Vice, reporter Joseph Cox documented generating a voice clone convincing enough to fool a bank’s authentication system.

There are fears bad actors will attempt to sway elections with voice cloning. And they’re not unfounded: In January, a phone campaign employed a deepfaked President Biden to deter New Hampshire citizens from voting — prompting the FCC to move to make future such campaigns illegal.

FCC officially declares AI-voiced robocalls illegal

So aside from banning deepfakes at the policy level, what steps is OpenAI taking, if any, to prevent Voice Engine from being misused? Harris mentioned a few.

First, Voice Engine is only being made available to an exceptionally small group of developers — around 10 — to start. OpenAI is prioritizing use cases that are “low risk” and “socially beneficial,” Harris says, like those in healthcare and accessibility, in addition to experimenting with “responsible” synthetic media.

A few early Voice Engine adopters include Age of Learning, an edtech company that’s using the tool to generate voice-overs from previously cast actors, and HeyGen, a storytelling app leveraging Voice Engine for translation. Livox and Lifespan are using Voice Engine to create voices for people with speech impairments and disabilities, and Dimagi is building a Voice Engine-based tool to give feedback to health workers in their primary languages.

Here’s generated voices from Lifespan:

https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/lifespan_generation_ordering.mp3

https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/lifespan_generation_talking.mp3

And here’s one from Livox:

https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/livox_generation_english.mp3

Second, clones created with Voice Engine are watermarked using a technique OpenAI developed that embeds inaudible identifiers in recordings. (Other vendors including Resemble AI and Microsoft employ similar watermarks.) Harris didn’t promise that there aren’t ways to circumvent the watermark, but described it as “tamper resistant.”

“If there’s an audio clip out there, it’s really easy for us to look at that clip and determine that it was generated by our system and the developer that actually did that generation,” Harris said. “So far, it isn’t open sourced — we have it internally for now. We’re curious about making it publicly available, but obviously, that comes with added risks in terms of exposure and breaking it.”

OpenAI launches a red teaming network to make its models more robust

Third, OpenAI plans to provide members of its red teaming network , a contracted group of experts that help inform the company’s AI model risk assessment and mitigation strategies, access to Voice Engine to suss out malicious uses.

Some experts argue that AI red teaming isn’t exhaustive enough and that it’s incumbent on vendors to develop tools to defend against harms that their AI might cause. OpenAI isn’t going quite that far with Voice Engine — but Harris asserts that the company’s “top principle” is releasing the technology safely.

General release

Depending on how the preview goes and the public reception to Voice Engine, OpenAI might release the tool to its wider developer base, but at present, the company is reluctant to commit to anything concrete.

Harris did give a sneak peek at Voice Engine’s roadmap, though, revealing that OpenAI is testing a security mechanism that has users read randomly generated text as proof that they’re present and aware of how their voice is being used. This could give OpenAI the confidence it needs to bring Voice Engine to more people, Harris said — or it might just be the beginning.

“What’s going to keep pushing us forward in terms of the actual voice matching technology is really going to depend on what we learn from the pilot, the safety issues that are uncovered and the mitigations that we have in place,” he said. “We don’t want people to be confused between artificial voices and actual human voices.”

And on that last point we can agree.

The Best Robot Voice Generator for 2024

Discover how to use robot voice generators and use AI text-to-speech tools to generate human-sounding voicovers.

Robot AI technology is leading the way in generating hyper-realistic text-to-speech voiceovers.

Imagine creating a hyper-realistic voiceover in a few clicks. Imagine converting that PDF document into a beautifully read audio file. Imagine generating an audiobook without the need for a voice actor or lengthy recording hours.

With robot (AI) technology, this is now all possible. Also referred to as AI voice generators or text-to-speech tools, robot voice generators are on the rise and are not going anywhere anytime soon.

From audiobook narration to AI-generated video content, AI voice generators are growing in popularity, offering an excellent alternative to robotic-sounding text-to-speech tools and human narration. 

In this article, we explore the different types of robot voice generators, what they are used for, and why  ElevenLabs is the best in the market.

Let's get started.  

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What Is a Robot Voice Generator?

An AI voice generator, sometimes known as a robot voice generator, is a practical tool powered by artificial intelligence. The tool will turn a piece of text, such as a script, PDF document, or ebook, into an audio file.

But don't robot voice generators sound, well, robotic?

Most AI voice generators can understand human speech, recognize emotions, and replicate specific nuances, such as pauses or tone changes, that prevent the final voiceover from sounding robotic. 

With the rise of the popularity of AI-powered tools, robot voice generators have also established a secure position in the current digital landscape. However, the level of understanding, variety of features, and ability to achieve an authentically human voiceover separates mediocre tools from distinguished ones.

This is where the difference between robotic and natural text-to-speech generators comes in. While robotic text-to-speech (TTS) tools are used to purely synthesize pieces of text, natural-sounding text-to-speech (TTS) tools are equipped with the features to produce a natural-sounding narration. 

Take a listen here:

Depending on the intended use both robotic and natural TTS tools have their intended uses, although many people prefer to incorporate (or listen to) natural TTS voices.

Why Are Natural-Sounding TTS Tools So Popular?

As artificial intelligence continues to evolve, so do consumer demands. Over the last couple of years, people have grown accustomed to natural-sounding narration or voiceovers, even if they are generated by AI, making them a prevalent tool for several uses.

So, what makes natural text-to-speech generators so unique? 

Tone of Voice 

AI voice generators are excellent at replicating a natural-sounding tone of voice, packed with all the nuances that differentiate simple TTS tools from more advanced ones.

Likewise, through a deeper understanding of how humans speak, such tools are an excellent option for avoiding that renowned "monotone" or mechanical voice often associated with earlier TTS models.

Emphasis on Words 

Particularly useful in marketing-related content or audiobook narration, emphasis on specific words can make a voiceover, while the lack of emphasis can break it. As humans, we tend to emphasize certain words during the speech, which adds further context to the topic being discussed and reflects the speaker's underlying emotions. 

The same does not apply to robotic TTS tools since they are not designed to pick up on such nuances. 

Appropriate Pauses

Another way that sets human speech apart from robotic speech is the inclusion of intentional and unintentional pauses. Intentional pauses are used to change topics, emphasize a particular statement, or invite discussion, while unintentional pauses refer to natural human functions such as breathing or swallowing. 

Using tools like ElevenLabs, this can be configured in the VoiceLab, to increase the realism of an AI generated voice, and improve its performance.

Accurate Replication

This point encompasses all other aspects of human speech, including tone, accents, volume, and pitch. Not only do these aspects make the speech sound more natural, but they can also effectively convey meaning, emotion, or the speaker's personality through changes. 

Natural-sounding TTS tools are designed to consider all these nuances, resulting in a more pleasant and authentic listening experience.

Additional Features

Advanced natural-sounding TTS software such as ElevenLabs also incorporates additional features that allow users to experiment with various settings, such as stability, clarity, and style exaggeration. 

In addition, such software often allows you to translate your script or voice recording into multiple languages, clone your own voice for narration purposes, and more. 

What Are AI Voice Generators Used For?

In the current digital landscape, AI voice generators have many uses. In fact, you've probably come across speech generated by AI previously and not even noticed it. That's primarily due to AI tool advancements, allowing artificially generated audio to sound as natural as possible.

AI-powered speech synthesis tools offer a wide range of potential uses, particularly for those involved in digital content creation. Examples include, but are not limited to:

Social Media 

You'll often find AI-generated audio used for content creation and SMM purposes, such as video voiceovers, product tutorials, and short-form video content, such as YouTube shorts, Instagram reels, and TikToks. 

Audiobooks 

Instead of narrating an entire book from scratch or hiring voice actors, many authors (or their teams) may implement natural-sounding AI-generated voiceovers for audiobooks or guides.

Podcasts 

Often used for translation purposes, AI-generated audio is becoming increasingly popular in the podcast industry.

Educational Content

AI voiceovers are often used for educational content, from tutorials to in-depth educational videos, since they provide clear narration, which is occasionally challenging to achieve with a human narrator.

Gaming 

AI voiceovers are also used to enhance video game narration, helping enrich instructions, backstories, and character dialogues.

ElevenLabs: An Advanced, Natural Voice Generator

ElevenLabs specializes in text-to-speech software designed to produce natural-sounding speech synthesis. At its core, the AI technology ensures that your audio sounds as if it's narrated by a real person instead of a robot.

Whether you're looking to narrate an audiobook, add a voiceover to a video, provide a clear explainer video for your customers, or publish any other digital content that requires a human-like narration, it's all easily achievable through ElevenLabs.

The best part? The simple and intuitive interface made up of Speech Synthesis and VoiceLab, is excellent for beginners and tech pros. 

Speech Synthesis

Sign up as a user via a new account or Google, and get started. You'll be redirected to the Text to Speech tool , where you can paste pre-written scripts, write them from scratch, and choose a speaker to narrate your text. 

If you already have a pre-recorded voiceover but are not sure it sounds as engaging and clear as it should, upload your file using the Speech-to-Speech tool and make the desired changes to your voice. 

Since the internet is without borders, people from all across the globe can access your content. If you want to appeal to a particular audience or translate your script into another language, you can easily do so via the Dubbing Studio.

You may want to narrate text using your own voice. ElevenLabs allows you to achieve that through voice cloning . Upload a sample of your voice, then use the advanced voice technology of ElevenLabs to clone it.

Alternatively, use VoiceLab to create your own custom voice. Make tweaks on things like tone, speed, clarity, pauses, gender, and more using the Lab tool. If you're not sure what you're looking for, browse the extensive Voice Library to choose a suitable voice from the community.

ElevenLabs is free to use – simply sign up and start generating your robot voiceover.

Key Takeaways

Robot voice generators, also referred to as AI voice generators, are becoming increasingly common for a variety of applications, including social media content generation, audiobook narration, podcast dubbing, educational content narration, and video game audio. 

While robotic-sounding TTS (text-to-speech) tools had a long run in popularity, they've now been overshadowed by natural TTS tools. This change is primarily due to higher audience expectations and a preference for human narration over mechanical voices. 

If you're looking to incorporate natural-sounding voiceovers into your professional or personal goals but remain unsure where to start, ElevenLabs is an intuitive, easy-to-use natural TTS tool for both novices and tech enthusiasts. 

What does TTS mean?

TTS stands for text-to-speech. This acronym refers to any tool that can convert written text into speech to generate a downloadable audio file. 

How much does ElevenLabs cost?

ElevenLabs includes a free pricing tier with limited features and subsequent paid pricing tiers depending on the features and character limits you wish to gain access to. The Starter Plan costs only $1 for the first month, increasing to $5/month thereafter. 

For more information on pricing plans, check out the  pricing page .

Can people tell when I use AI instead of my own voice?

Not anymore. As artificial intelligence continues to evolve, so do AI-powered text-to-speech tools. Software like ElevenLabs allows you to generate entirely natural voiceovers that are nearly impossible to distinguish from real-life human narration.

Try ElevenLabs today