Speech to Text

How to dictate text

1. Choose the language you are going to speak. Recognition is tuned to one language at a time, and choosing the right English — US, UK or India — improves accuracy with accents.
2. Tap the microphone and allow microphone access the first time.
3. Speak at a normal pace. Words appear as you talk and may be revised a moment later as the phrase is completed.
4. Tap the microphone again to stop, correct anything in the transcript box — it is an ordinary text box — and tap Copy.

Languages you can dictate in

English (US, UK and India), Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Spanish, French, German and Arabic. For the Indian languages the transcript is written in the language's own script.

Getting an accurate transcript

• Use a quiet room, and a headset microphone if you have one. Fans, traffic and other voices cause most errors.
• Speak in whole sentences. The recogniser uses the surrounding words to decide between similar-sounding ones, so a full phrase comes out better than single words.
• Spell out unusual names afterwards. Names of people, places and products are the most common mistakes; fix them by hand.
• Check the punctuation. Full stops and commas are not always added for you. Read the text through before you use it.
• If recognition stops after a pause, tap the microphone to start again.

Which browsers work

The tool relies on speech recognition built into the browser. Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge on desktop and Android support it well. Safari supports it partly, and Firefox does not offer it, in which case the page tells you so. The page must be open over a secure connection, which manyhand.com always is.

Where your voice goes

This is the one tool on ManyHand where something leaves your device. In Chrome and Edge the browser sends the audio to its maker's speech service to be turned into text, so dictation needs an internet connection. ManyHand never receives the audio or the transcript and stores neither. If what you are dictating is confidential, type it instead. The privacy policy has the details.

What it is useful for

Drafting a message or an email without typing, taking down notes while your hands are busy, writing in an Indian language without learning a keyboard layout, and getting a first draft of something you would rather say than write. For the reverse, see Text to Speech.