How to use Android for dictation and transcription
Your Assistant can take dictation.
Essays, emails, articles and the like mainly get written on computers because it is much easier to work on large screens and keyboards. But what about ideas that arrive while you are out walking or traveling? Pretty much everyone carries a smartphone, and they are ideal for making short notes while on the go. But that doesn’t help much with writing your long-awaited novel, or any other content that includes a substantial number of words.
Back in the day many writers, business people, doctors, scientists and others would dictate their text either directly to an assistant (a stenographer), or into a recorder (a Dictaphone) to have it transcribed by their assistant later. That’s old school, but now you can have an Android Assistant standing by at all times, anywhere (Android 6.0 onwards). Plus you can integrate Assistant with Google Keep, which is great for storing quick notes in any format. So, surely we can just dictate to our device and the words will be written down for us?
Yes sort of, but in reality Google
Assistant is great at creating lists, notes and reminders, but is not much of a stenographer. To dictate and transcribe your novel, or even a long email, you need a dedicated dictation app.
Gboard Talk to Write
As a starting point, Google’s popular Gboard keyboard, which is the default in most Android devices, includes a Talk to Write function. It’s somewhat limited, and best used for creating simple messages and draft documents, but quick and easy enough. To use Talk to Write, make sure that your device keyboard is Gboard (if not, you can install it from the Google Play Store and set it as the default) then:
1. Open any app that you can type into, like Gmail, Messages, WhatsApp, Twitter – you can even ask Assistant to open the app.
2. Tap where you want to enter text.
3. At the top of your keyboard, tap
on the microphone icon.
4. When you see “Speak now,” say
what you want to be written.
Note that you tap the microphone icon at the top of the Gboard keyboard for Talk to Write. If there is no microphone icon, you need to go into Settings and activate.
Search in Settings for “voice typing” to find it.
Add punctuation
If you speak clearly the conversion to text is fast and accurate in Talk to Write, but there is minimal formatting available. You can add punctuation as you go, although we found that a bit hit-and-miss. Most commands were reliable, but for some reason our test device spelt out “new line” and “new paragraph” every time rather than treating them as punctuation commands. Maybe these commands are not fully supported. And as you might expect, some punctuation commands differ between US and UK-Australian English.
Some punctuation words and phrases available (US English / UK-Australian English):
• Period / Full stop
• Comma
• Exclamation point / Exclamation mark
• Question mark
• New line
• New paragraph
You can also replace a word in any document, either while dictating it or separately. Just:
1. Open the document or message with the word you want to change.
2. Touch and hold the word.
3. At the top of your keyboard, tap
the microphone icon.
4. When you see “Speak now,” say the new word.
Note that Google Talk to Write is a little prudish, writing “rude” words with just the first letter and a string of asterisks!
Other Options
Gboard Talk to Write is free and easy, works in several languages, but is very basic. This is one area where Android devices lag behind the default dictation software in an iPhone for example, but you can fix that by heading for the Play Store and choosing an app or two. We found that many of the Android dictation apps had no more functionality than just using Gboard, but one was a standout.
Speechnotes app
Of all the dictation apps we tried Speechnotes was the overall favourite. It has broad capabilities, suits longer dictations, and everything just worked. Features include:
• Dictation does not time out if you have lengthy pauses between your spoken words, sentences or paragraphs. This lets you stop and think when necessary without having to reactivate the microphone.
• Punctuation commands are more extensive than Gboard and are flexible. For example, “start brackets” and “start parentheses” are both available, and “new line” or “new paragraph” was recognised every time.
• A punctuation keyboard is available as an alternative to spoken commands. This keyboard makes it simple to manually insert punctuation, and also emoticons, while you dictate.
• You can edit your text on the fly while still in dictation mode.
• Your transcribed text is saved automatically as you go along. Each file is given a default name that is easily edited.
• You can automatically save your dictation files to Google Drive.
• There is a Home screen widget for instant access, a Dark theme, and more.
Speechnotes is free with an unobtrusive advertising banner, or a premium version can be purchased to remove the ads and provide a few additional functions. We thought it was an excellent free upgrade for dictation and transcription on Android.
Speech to Text app
If you are looking for a very simple speech to text application for taking long notes e.g. essays and reports, without any restrictions on the size of the created documents, Speech to Text is an option worth trying. It features auto-saving, auto-spacing and custom keyboards, and is ideal for dictating long drafts.
SpeechTexter app
SpeechTexter is another simple speech-to-text Android app. Like most of these apps it uses Google’s database both on and offline, so if you want to use the offline mode, you’ll need to download the necessary language packs.
You can do so by heading to Settings, search for “voice typing”, then tap on Google Voice Typing and select Offline speech recognition. To choose the languages to download, tap on All and select the language you want.
In addition to basic dictation and speech-to-text, you can use SpeechTexter to create SMS messages, emails, and tweets. The app also boasts a custom dictionary which makes adding personal information such as phone numbers and addresses easy.
Note: If you are using SpeechTexter be sure to go into its Settings and activate “Save on
Exit” to avoid losing dictation when you accidentally close the app without saving!