Principle for mac apple watch holder. Perfect ideas don't wait for you to sit down at your desk. They come during hikes, while you're walking your dog, and in the middle of lunch. Shouldn’t you be able to save those thoughts at any time, no matter where you are or what you’re doing? That’s what voice dictation is for. It lets you record your ideas hands-free, even if you're folding laundry, walking to the grocery store, or making dinner. And it's one of the best accessibility features on computers, helping anyone write their words without typing.

Bodie’s Typing is a free software for learning typing. If you practice typing daily with this freeware you can easily increase your typing speed and accuracy with the help of this freeware. Bodie’s Typing teaches you touch typing. Touch typing is a technique of typing without looking at the keyboard. I know this app is for tying on the iPad, but I have a Bluetooth keyboard and I enjoy practicing typing on it more than the on-screen keyboard on the iPad. I guess I will take my time on that. Therefore, I enjoy practicing typing and this is a wonderful set up. Keep up the good work!!!

Voice recognition software can translate hundreds of thousands of words in dozens of languages, in real time. Talk to your devices and tell them to open new apps, send an email, or even tell you a joke. They're what make Siri and Alexa fun—but use that same tech to turn your voice into text much faster than you could ever type, and they'll improve your productivity, too. We wanted to find how much voice dictation tools impact efficiency, and how well they work. So we tested free, built-in speech recognition software and paid apps on desktop and mobile to see which ones were best at comprehension, accuracy, and ease of use. Here are the very best dictation apps to turn your voice into text, along with tips for finding the right microphone and creating detailed speech-to-text notes. Plus, you’ll find out if voice dictation is right for you.

Originally published April 14, 2016; updated May 30, 2017 to add and include new pricing, supported languages, and details on apps and microphones. • • • • How Voice Dictation Helped me be More Productive I write thousands of words every week, and I'm embarrassed to say that I had never tried voice dictation tools before recently. You can imagine my pleasant surprise when I realized I could dictate an introduction paragraph and turn voice to text in half the time it would take me to type. After evaluating more than a dozen desktop and mobile apps, my favorite was Google Docs Voice Typing. Google Docs had the best accuracy without forcing me to talk like an android. It also has the most extensive list of voice commands for editing and formatting text—and it's free.

Anything you want to do in Google Docs, you could do with your voice. For mobile, my favorite dictation app was the built-in dictation tool in iOS on iPhone and iPad—and its cousin from Google on Android devices. From opening new apps to texting a friend to quickly recording an idea, I knew I could always count on Siri. The dictation works in any app or browser that has a virtual keyboard, so I didn’t have to jump around in different apps. I also like how easy it is to get up-and-running: Once you turn Siri on, there's little to no learning curve. I also experienced all the standard benefits of voice dictation. I saved time and energy, was able to multitask while dictating an outline to a new post, and could safely add something to my to-do list while going on a bike ride.

Plus, there was an unexpected benefit: Using a voice dictation app silenced my internal editor. With dictation, I was able to do a pure brain-dump of ideas and, as a result, had more material to work with. Dictation lets me focus on ideation instead of prose. But my favorite tools might not be for you. Here are some different options to check out over multiple platforms.

The Best Dictation Software I evaluated dozens of dictation apps and tested them for comprehension, accuracy, and ease of use. Here are our top four dictation tools to turn voice to text on your computer. Look no further than your Mac, iPhone, or iPad for one of the best dictations app. Apple’s Siri-powered, built-in is included recent versions of macOS and iOS. By default, you can dictate up to 30 seconds at a time while connected to the Internet, using Siri’s servers to detect and translate what you said. It’s great for dictating something quickly on the go, but not the best choice for composing an essay. If your Mac is running OS X 10.9 or later or you have an iPhone 6s or newer, you can use Enhanced Dictation for unlimited dictation.