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Best voice to text software

Messages
94
Please redirect me and merge the thread if this is already covered elsewhere and up to date (a lot has happened in the past 5yrs for software I'm guessing).

I'm realising that if I could dictate what I write, and ideally have the computer sometimes read to me what I want to read, I would be able to both do and rest more.
My cognitive issues are bad enough that I'm struggling to keep up with essentials, and unable to deal with important things like wills and similar legal stuff.

Can anyone recommend the best software for voice to text?
I would prefer not to have to be online when using it
but I'm slowly getting to realise this might be a necessary compromise (of my privacy).

I do have an iPad mini
but I don't want to take the time and effort to train it
(I tried once and it's insanely bad at first - and you have to be online)
if there is something better out there.

Suggestions?
 

lafarfelue

Senior Member
Messages
433
Location
Australia
I've heard from a few sources (friends/people with FM and RSI, mainly) that Dragon is probably still the best one out there. I believe that it has had a recent update for iOS, with the "Dragon Anywhere" app.
 

Alvin2

The good news is patients don't die the bad news..
Messages
2,996
I tried this once and found i could not think out loud for typing. I really can't explain it, i bought dragon (years ago) and tried to use it. I still have the software but its ancient now.
 
Messages
3,263
New Macs come with built in dictation software. Its really good, I use it a lot.

The Mac dictation utility is much better than Dragon. There are a number of accents you can choose, and it works interactively with your usual software. So if you use Word for example, you can type some text in, then speak a few sentences, then type more text. It transcribes your speech in real time, so you see the words appearing on your document as you speak, but it also operates over whole phrases, so it will often go back and change words as it 'realises' what you meant earlier, very clever.

Its pretty accurate, although if you're writing technical stuff, you should expect to have to backtrack and correct a few words here and there. It knows sometimes where you're using an acronym (eg. CFS), but its not always correct with acronyms.

It doesn't require you to be online.

If you have a recent Mac, you would never want to spend money on the inferior Dragon.

There's a certain trick to using dictation software. You have to think carefully before your open your mouth, and that feels a bit overwhelming at first. You have to get used to saying your punctuation out loud (e.g. 'comma'). Also, if you're a fluent typist, you will have developed a sort of flow between head and keys that's really efficient for you, and using dictation will interrupt that flow and feel awkward at first. But you get used to it as you go along.