Whether you’re taking meeting minutes, interviewing someone, or researching for a project, speech-to-text apps are an excellent tool that saves time. Both students and professionals can benefit from using an app that provides speech-to-text functionality.
You can use some apps in the list below in your browser, or you can use them in an app on your phone. Depending on what you want to do with the transcribed notes, some apps may be more valuable than others. You can find the apps on Android and iOS, so your options aren’t limited depending on your phone.
Dragon Anywhere provides you with dictation capabilities without any word limits. Suppose you’ve had bad experiences with talk-to-text apps transcribing your audio incorrectly. You don’t have to worry about that with Dragon Anywhere since it has 99% accuracy with powerful voice formatting and editing.
You can use the Train Words feature to teach Dragon Anywhere how you speak. Once you have your audio transcribed, you can share your documents by email, Dropbox, and other apps. The app doesn’t limit the length of your documents. You can easily adjust formatting, edit them quickly, and share them on the most common cloud-sharing platforms.
Dragon Anywhere allows you to add custom words for industry-specific terminology for better dictation accuracy. The platform has solid voice formatting and editing options, including selecting words and sentences for deletion or editing.
You can save time crafting emails and dictating your text. You can open your dictation files in Microsoft Word or save your dictation to Evernote as a new note. Furthermore, you can change between Dragon Anywhere and your desktop to complete documents. The app allows you to dictate on multiple mobile devices, as long as you log in to your accounts and synchronize all your customizations.
Download: Android | iOS (Free, in-app purchases)
Gboard is a platform that accurately converts audio to text with an API (application programming interface) powered by the best of Google’s AI technology and research. You can access Gboard using Google Assistant, and the app transcribes your speech with accurate captions. You benefit from Google’s advanced intense learning neural network algorithms in its automatic speech recognition.
You can test the app’s Teach Speak-to-Text user interface to manage and create custom resources, such as standard industry terms and acronyms. One of Gboard’s key features is its speech adaptation, which provides hints to improve your transcription accuracy of unique words or phrases. The feature uses classes to automatically convert spoken numbers into currencies, addresses, and years.
You can use Gboard to dictate emails, create Google Docs, and in any other app on your phone. You can transcribe video meetings to take meeting minutes. Gboard offers robust language support in over 125 languages and variations. If you’re in a noisy room, the app’s speech-to-text can handle the audio without needing any noise cancellation.
You can transcribe audio the app receives from the audio on your device’s microphone, or you can upload pre-recorded audio from the cloud or your device. You may be interested in learning how to transcribe speech in real-time with Google Translate.
Download: Android | iOS (Free)
Speechnotes is available as a mobile app and a web service. The online version of the platform works in your Chrome browser, so you don’t have to download any programs—the company endeavors to provide the best online dictation tool. The app’s creators designed it to provide an environment without distractions. The app simulates a blank sheet of white paper to spark your mind.
The app is free, and the creators claim that the accuracy is comparable to Dragon Anywhere. If you’re looking for an app that allows you to use voice control other apps, Speechnotes isn’t the app you’re looking for, and the app is strictly a dictation app.
Features of Speechnotes include Autosave, which saves the document in real time when you make changes, so you don’t have to interrupt yourself. You can save your transcription in Google Drive or download it as a document to your computer to email or print your note.
Data from Speechnotes shows that speaking instead of typing allows you to think and talk it out uninterrupted, which supports creative thinking, which is good for content creators. If you have a podcast, you might be interested in what Descript is and how you use it.
Download: Android (Free, in-app purchases)
Transkriptor can convert audio recorded on your device or audio you’ve uploaded in minutes. When your transcription is ready, you get a notification on your phone, if you allow it, and receive an email.
You can transcribe interviews, video content, meetings, podcasts, and phone calls. You can save time and money using a transcription app to convert audio to text. Before talk-to-text apps, you had to hire someone to listen to audio and make notes, and now you can take advantage of the technology advancements.
Regardless of your profession, if you need to make notes, you can benefit from using Transkriptor. Whether you’re a journalist, academic researcher, student, or lawyer, as long as you have to take notes, you can use the app to improve your efficiency.
You can download the text in various formats, such as SRT, TXT, or Microsoft Word, to share the text with others. To make your videos more accessible, you can create subtitles when you convert your event recordings to text. You might be interested in working with closed captions and transcriptions in Adobe Premiere.
Download: Android | iOS (Free, in-app purchases)
Braina is another dictation application with speech recognition software that converts your voice into text on any website or software. For example, you can dictate in Microsoft Word or Notepad. The platform supports over 100 languages, including Japanese, Chinese, Russian, Portuguese, Italian, French, Spanish, Hindi, German, and English. The app is easy, fast, and accurate, helping you be more productive.
Braina is an app you can use to control your computer. You can customize your voice commands and replies to automatically launch any software, open a website, or trigger keyboard macros utilizing the app to interact with your computer via Wi-Fi from anywhere in your home.
The app goes beyond the functionality of Siri and Cortana, providing you with a powerful office productivity tool. Braina is the result of solid research the creators did in the artificial intelligence industry. Like a human brain, the app is a digital assistant that can think, understand, and learn from experience.
Download: Android | iOS (Free)
Otter can take notes, record meetings, and generate text that you can share. If staff need to miss meetings to meet deadlines, you can record meetings and share notes to keep members in the loop.
You can capture all your important meetings and conversations, whether they take place in person or virtually. Otter assistant integrates with Google Meet, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams. You can save the transcriptions in a secure, central, and accessible place.
Otter allows you to customize the app’s vocabulary, including names and acronyms. It doesn’t matter where you are; you can record and transcribe conversations in person, on your phone, or via video.
Otter for business allows you to connect with your Google or Microsoft Calendar and automatically schedule your Otter assistant to join Google Meet, Zoom, or Microsoft Teams meetings. You can pay more attention to the discussion when you know the app is recording it, and it notes everything participants say. You may be interested in learning about the best tools for transcribing video meetings to shareable documents.
Download: Android | iOS (Free, in-app purchases)
Are You Ready to Increase Your Efficiency?
Once you find a talk-to-text app that works for you, you can take advantage of the functionality to save time on minute-taking and researching topics. Some apps allow you to control your laptop or desktop computer from your phone, as long as you connect your device to your Wi-Fi network.
You can try different apps to see which one you feel more comfortable with. Depending on what you want to use the app to achieve, you can find an app that you can use to take notes, write emails, and write documents.
